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tihvaxy  of  €He  Cheolo^icd  ^tmimry 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 
PRESENTED  BY 

Professor  F.   V/.   Loetscher 


BX  5930  .G35  1914 

Gailor,  Thomas  Frank,  1856 

1935. 
The  Episcopal  church 


THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2009  with  funding  from 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


http://www.archive.org/details/episcopalchurchiOOgail 


I        JAN  ;d<i  i952 


JAN   ;d<i  ibt 

THE  EPISCOPAL  CHtMl 


Its  History 

Its  Prayer  Book 

Its  Ministry 


FIVE  LECTURES 


THOMAS  F/GAILOR,  S.T.D. 

BISHOP  OF  TENNESSEE 


MILWAUKEE 

THE  YOUNG  CHURCHMAN  CO. 

1914 


Copyright  by 

THE  YOUNG  CHURCHMAN  CO. 

1914 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

I  HAVE  coxsEXTED  to  the  publication  of  these  lec- 
tures at  the  request  of  many  people  who  heard  them, 
and  especially  of  the  members  of  the  Men's  Bible  Class 
of  St.  Paul's  Church,  Chattanooga,  for  whom  the  lec- 
tures on  the  Prayer  Book  were  written. 

It  is  thought  that  the  information  presented  in 
this  brief  and  popular  form  may  prove  useful  to  per- 
sons enquiring  about  the  Church,  and  who  may  in  this 
way  be  led  on  to  wider  and  fuller  investigation. 

As  the  lectures  were  delivered  at  various  times,  and 
to  different  congregations,  they  necessarily  involve 
some  repetitions;  but  for  the  uninstructed  reader  this 
may  be  an  advantage;  and  therefore  they  are  allowed 
to  stand  as  they  were  originally  prepared. 

Thomas  F.  Gailor, 

Easter,  IdlJk-  Bishop  of  Tennessee. 


TO 
THE  VERY  KEV.    JA^^IES   CRAIK  MORRIS,   ]\r.A., 

DEAX  OF  ST.  Mary's  cathedral,  Memphis, 

TEXXESSEE,    THIS    LITTLE    BOOK    IS    AFFEC" 
TTOXATELY  DEDICATED 


CONTENTS 

The  History  of  the  Church  of  England     .     .         1 

The   Book   of   Common   Prayer 37 

The  Book  of  Common  Prayer  as  a  Product  of 

the    Eeformation 59 

The  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  the  Doc- 
trinal   AND    Practical    Abuses    Which    it 

Superseded 77 

The  Historic  Episcopate:  Its  Meaning  and 
Value.  A  sermon  preached  at  the  consecra- 
tion of  the  Rev.  James  R.  Winchester,  D.D., 
as   Bishop   Coadjutor   of   Arkansas     ...       95 


A  Brief  List  of 
BOOKS  FOR  FURTHER  STUDY 

I — Historical 

The  Historians  and  the  English  Reformation.     Littell.     1  vol. 
Reformation-  of  the  Church  of  England.  J.  H.  Blunt.   2  vols. 
History  of  the  Church  of  England.     Canon  Dixon.     G  vols. 
English  Reformation.     Bishop  Collins.     1  vol. 
Introduction  to  History  of  Church  of  England.     Bev.  H.  0. 

Wakeman.     1  vol. 
Lectures  on  Reformation.     Aubrey  Moore.     1  vol. 
Ecclesia  Anglicana.     Jennings.     1  vol. 
The  Church  in  America.     Bishop  Coleman.     1  vol. 
Eighteen  Centuries  of  the  Church  in  England.     A.  H.  Hore. 

1  vol. 

II — Prayer  Book 

History  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.     F.  Procter,  M.A. 

1  vol. 
The  Book  of  Common  Prayer.     Samuel  Hart,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

1  vol. 
Annotated  Book    of   Common    Prayer.     J.    H.    Blunt,    D.D. 

1  vol. 
The  Book  of  Common  Prayer.     J.  H.  Benton.     1  vol. 
The  Church  in  the  Prayer  Book.     Temple.     1  vol. 
The  Holy  Sinrit  and  the  Prayer  Book.     Haughton.     1  vol. 

Ill — Theology  and  Ministry 

The  Body  of  Christ.     Gore.     1  vol. 
The  Incarnation.     Wilberforce.     1  vol. 
Foundations  of  the  Creed.     Goodwyn.     1  vol. 
The  Christian  Church.     Darwell  Stone.     1  vol. 
Ministerial  Priesthood.     Moberly.     1  vol. 
The  Christian  Ministry.     Gore.     I  vol. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH 
OF  ENGLAND 

HE  religion  of  Christ  is  Catholic — a 
universal  religion ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is 
not  limited  in  its  appeal  or  consola- 
tions to  any  race  or  age  or  class  or 
clime.  To  every  man  and  woman  that  is  born 
upon  the  earth  it  says :  ^' You  are  one  people,  one 
family,  one  in  hope  and  purpose,  one  in  the  Re- 
demption by  the  purple  blood  of  Christ.'' 

And  the  appropriateness  of  Christianity  to  the 
needs  of  all  races  of  men  is  one  of  the  strongest 
evidences  of  its  divine  origin;  although  to  the 
superficial  observer,  it  confuses  the  history  of  its 
development.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  great  insti- 
tutions and  truths  of  the  Gospel  are  like  a  stream 
flowing  through  the  wilderness  of  human  life  and 
taking  color  from  the  banks  through  which  it  has 
to  pass.  The  truths,  the  institutions,  remain  the 
same;  but  the  different  races  of  men  have  given 
them  a  variety  of  interpretation  and  expression. 

The  brightness  and  joyousness  of  tempera- 
ment, the  intellectual  subtlety  and  playful  fancy. 


•1  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

of  the  Greek;  demanded  and  erealed  a  type  of 
Christian  thongiit  and  worship  easily  distin- 
guished from  that  produced  by  the  less  intellectual 
and  more  practical,  the  more  serious  and  law- 
loving  Roman;  and  the  Christianity  of  the  Teu- 
tonic people  has  ever  differed,  in  its  external  ex- 
pression at  least,  from  that  of  the  Latin  or  Greek 
or  Slavonic  Race.  We  are  Teutons.  The  race  to 
which  we  owe  our  language  and  our  social  and 
political  institutions  is  the  Teutonic  Race;  and 
therefore  the  story  of  the  development  of  these 
institutions  is  full  of  interest  and  instruction. 

The  history  of  the  Church  of  England,  like 
the  history  of  the  English  language  and  people, 
is  complicated  by  the  existence  of  many  separate 
factors  of  influence,  that  from  time  to  time  have 
checked  or  retarded  or  changed  the  course  of  its 
development.  Yet  its  age,  out-dating  that  of  any 
national  Church  in  the  modern  world;  its  insular 
position;  its  comparative  freedom  through  long 
periods  from  external  direction  or  control;  have 
afforded  it  unequalled  opportunity  for  the  culti- 
vation of  its  own  special  and  peculiar  characteris- 
tics, so  that  it  presents  to  the  student  the  fairest 
example  of  the  National  idea  in  Christianity  that 
can  be  found  anyAvhere  to-day.  From  the  very 
first  the  history  of  the  English  Church  has  been 
closely  identified  with  the  growth  and  progress  of 


HISTOEY   OF   THE   CHURCH  OF   ENGLAND         3 

Augio-Saxon  liberties  aucl  Augio-Saxou  law;  and 
the  proper  understanding  of  this  history  will 
greatly  contribute  to  the  right  estimate  of  both 
English  and  American  political  institutions.  It 
cannot  be  said  that  our  people  at  large  fully  ap- 
preciate the  importance  of  this  Church  history. 
Religious  and  sectional  prejudices  have  both  com- 
bined to  misrepresent  the  facts.  Titles,  dress, 
and  social  usages  have  obscured  in  the  popular 
mind  the  real  purpose  and  reason  of  the  Church 
of  our  fathers.  Bishops  in  the  House  of  Lords — 
and  Clergymen  dependent  upon  their  Patrons  for 
their  livings;  the  collection  of  tithes  (which  some 
people  wrongly  think  are  by  act  of  Parliament), 
and  the  bygone  legal  disability  of  Dissent — these 
things  have  made  the  very  name  of  the  State 
Church,  or  the  King's  Church,  impopular  among 
many  of  our  American  people,  and  have  led  them 
to  forget  the  real  nature  and  character  of  that 
institution  of  which  these  things  are  only  the  un- 
necessary, unfortunate  accidents.  The  object  of 
this  chapter  is  to  sketch,  as  briefly  and  simply  as 
may  be,  the  history  of  the  English  Church,  and 
to  show,  if  possible,  what  is  her  due  and  lawful 
position  to-day  in  Christendom. 

The  history  naturally  divides  itself  into  dis- 
tinct periods,  well  defined  and  easy  to  determine. 


4  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUHCIl 

They  are: 

(1)  The  British  period  from  the  Roman  Con- 
quest of  Britain  to  the  Mission  of  Angus- 
tine,  596  A.  D.; 

(2)  The  Saxon  period  to  the  isTorman  Con- 
quest, 1066  A.  D. ; 

(3)  The  Anglo-Roman  period  to  the  Repudia- 
tion of  the  Papal  Supremacy,  A.  D. 
1534; 

(4)  The  period  of  Transition  and  Reconstruc- 
tion from  A.  D.  1534  to  A.  D.  1662  ;  and, 

(5)  The  Modern  period. 

THE  BRITISH  CHURCH 

The  early  British  Period  need  not  detain  us 
long.  The  evidence  is  meagre  and  comparatively 
uninteresting.  Xo  less  than  three  theories  as  to 
the  manner  of  the  introduction  of  Christianity 
into  Britain  have  been  held  and  advocated  by  emi- 
nent scholars.  There  is  strong  enough  evidence 
to  make  the  learned  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  Christo- 
pher Wordsworth,  declare  that  it  is  probable  that 
St.  Paul  himself  preached  the  Gospel  in  Britain 
about  A.  D.  64.  (Wordsworth's  ^'Introduction  to 
Pastoral  Epistles.") 

The  most  favored  tradition  in  England  was 
that  which  assigned  the  preaching  of  Christ  and 
the  founding  of  Glastonbury  Abbey  to  Joseph  of 
Arimathea.      Queen    Elizabeth    and    Archbishop 


HISTORY  OF   THE   CHURCH   OF   ENGLAND         5 

Parker  (see  Hore's  '^Eighteen  Centuries"  etc., 
p.  10)  incidentally  appeal  to  this  as  received 
tradition.  The  English  Bishops  at  the  Council 
of  Basle,  A.  D.  1439,  successfully  claimed  prec- 
edence on  account  of  it. 

The  Roman  Catholic  historian,  Baronius 
(1557),  has  a  curious  marginal  gloss,  in  which  it 
is  recorded  that  Joseph  of  Arimathea  went  to 
Britain  by  w^ay  of  Gaul  and  founded  the  Church 
there,  and  that  the  authority  for  this  statement 
is  a  manuscript  in  the  Vatican  library. 

There  is  very  strong  evidence  for  the  opinion 
that  the  Claudia,  wife  of  Pudens,  mentioned  by 
St.  Paul  (II  Tim.  4),  is  the  same  Claudia  men- 
tioned by  the  Roman  poet  Martial,  and  was  a 
British  princess,  educated  in  the  Christian  Eaith 
by  Timothy  at  Rome  (see  R.  H.  Cole,  '^The  An- 
glican Church"). 

It  is  sufficient  for  our  purpose  to  suppose  that 
Christianity  came  into  Britain  through  the 
Church  in  Gaul  somewhere  towards  the  end  of  the 
first  century.  Tertullian  mentions  the  fact  before 
the  end  of  the  second  century,  and  we  know  that 
some  of  the  victims  of  the  Diocletian  persecution, 
St.  Alban  for  example,  were  members  of  the 
British  Church.  The  names  of  British  Bishops 
appear  in  the  records  of  the  Council  of  Aries 
(A.  D.  340),  Sardica  (A.  D.  350),  and  Rimini 


6  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

(A.  D.  352),  at  the  last  of  Avhich  we  are  told  that 
most  of  them  refused  to  be  entertained  at  the  pub- 
lic expense  and  provided  for  their  own  necessities. 
The  British  Church  is  specially  commended  by 
Athanasius  (A.  D.  329)  as  having  been  loyal  to 
the  Creed  and  decisions  of  the  first  Council  of 
Xicea.  From  the  information  we  can  glean  from 
the  writings  of  Gildas,  Xennius,  and  Bede,  and 
from  statements  of  Italians  and  Saxons  who  were 
unfriendly,  it  appears  that  the  gTowth  of  the 
British  Church  was  hindered  by  ignorance  and 
contention,  and  by  the  quick,  excitable,  and  war- 
like character  of  the  people.  Yet  the  names  of 
not  a  few  very  noble  characters  still  shine  out  in 
her  annals  that  have  outlasted  the  changes  of 
centuries. 

British  ideas  and  British  institutions  for  good 
or  evil  were  submerged  by  the  Saxon  and  Danish 
invasions.  Our  inheritance  from  them  may  be 
more  than  we  can  define,  but  it  appears  to  be 
small.  As  a  rule,  in  our  social  and  political  his- 
tory and  in  our  language  there  is  nothing  more 
than  the  survival  of  some  common  custom,  word, 
or  phrase  to  prove  that  we  were  Britons.  So  it 
is  with  the  British  Church.  The  very  word  which 
we,  as  English-speaking  people,  use  to  describe 
the  Christian  Society — the  word  ^'Church" — we 
probably  get  as  an  inheritance  from  ancient  Brit- 


HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND        7 

ain.  It  is  a  Greek  word — with  Greek  associa- 
tions— connoting  a  great  original  conception  of 
Christianity.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  Teutonic 
race  that  we  put  the  emphasis  upon  the  corporate 
relation  to  our  Lord's  Person  and  not  upon  the 
fact  that  we  are  ^^elect"  or  ^^called."  We  say 
Kuriahe  —  Kirh  —  Church  —  ^'belonging  to  the 
Lord/'  and  not  Ecclesia  or  Eglise,  ^^called  out.'' 

THE  SAXON  PERIOD 
596—1066  A.  D. 

In  the  year  596  A.  D.  the  great  and  good 
Bishop  Gregory  I.  of  Rome,  stirred  by  the  story 
of  the  flood  of  heathenism  brought  into  Britain 
by  the  Saxon  Conquest,  sent  the  monk  Augnistine 
to  convert  the  people  if  possible  and  establish  the 
Church  there.  It  is  not  certain  that  Augustine 
ever  came  into  personal  contact  with  the  British 
Bishops.  If  he  did,  it  is  not  strange  that  cordial 
relations  were  not  established  between  them. 
Augustine  was  narrow,  supercilious  and  childish. 
But  he  did  his  best.  Lie  was  earnest  and  sincere. 
He  contrasts  painfully  and  pathetically  in  both 
wisdom  and  temper  with  Pope  Gregory.  But  he 
converted  Ethelbert,  the  King  of  Kent,  and 
during  his  lifetime  maintained  the  Christian  re- 
ligion in  that  Kingdom.  Meanwhile  the  Keltic 
missionaries,  recovering  from  their  terror  of  the 
Saxons,  began  to  make  their  way  from  Scotland 


8  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

into  the  Kingdom  of  Xorthiimbria ;  and  there  is 
no  missionary  record  that  surpasses  in  picturesque 
beauty  and  glorious  self-sacrifice  the  life  of  Aidan 
and  Chadd,  and  the  foundation  of  Lindisfarne. 

I  believe  that  the  actual  statistics  can  be  pro- 
duced, as  Mr.  Gladstone  says,  to  show  that  more 
real  and  permanent  work  among  the  Saxons  was 
accomplished  by  the  Keltic,  that  is,  by  the  Britons, 
than  by  the  Italian  missionaries — but  that  is  a 
question  by  itself.  It  makes  no  difference  whether 
we  credit  the  conversion  of  the  Saxons  to  Augus- 
tine and  his  followers  or  to  the  Kelts.  We  need 
not  fear  to  give  Gregory  and  Kome  the  glory. 
The  Papal  Dominion  of  Hildebrand  and  Inno- 
cent had  not  been  founded  in  the  year  A.  D.  596 ; 
and  if  all  the  Popes  had  been  like  Gregory,  and 
if  Eome  had  always  been  the  Rome  of  Gregory, 
there  would  have  been  no  rejection  of  the  Roman 
name. 

In  the  year  660  A.  D.  the  Saxon  Church  had 
a  varying  prosperity  in  the  Seven  separate  King- 
doms into  which  England  was  divided.  It  was 
virtually  unorganized  and  inefficient.  Its  leaders 
were  separated  by  sectional  jealousies,  and  racial 
prejudices — Briton  against  Roman — and  individ- 
ual Bishops  yielded  themselves  naturally  to  the 
whims  of  the  Kings,  to  whom  they  happened  to 
be  subject.     In  667  A.  D.,  Theodore,  a  Greek, 


HISTORY  OF  THE   CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND        9 

of  Tarsus  in  Cilicia,  was  consecrated  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury.  He  came  to  England  in  A.  D. 
668.  He  went  immediately  to  work  to  organize 
the  Church  on  national  lines.  He  found  dioceses 
identical  with  Kingdoms.  There  were  no  settled 
Clergy  and  no  definite  territorial  subdivisions. 
He  reformed  all  this,  subdivided  the  dioceses,  and 
consecrated  a  Bishop  for  each.  He  refused  to 
recognize  old  British  customs  as  distinct  from 
Koman,  and  prohibited  their  champions  from 
holding  office  in  the  Church.  He  made  some 
mistakes,  no  doubt;  but  he  was  a  great  Arch- 
bishop, and  to  him  more  than  to  any  other  man 
the  English  Church  owes  its  organization.  Into 
every  detail  of  worship  and  discipline  his  influ- 
ence extended.  If  he  did  not  invent,  he  certainly 
encouraged  and  extended  the  Parochial  system. 
He  held  two  national  Councils — one  at  Hertford 
in  A.  D.  673,  and  one  at  Hatfield  in  A.  D.  680— 
at  the  latter  of  which  the  decrees  of  the  four 
General  Councils  were  formally  accepted.  Thus 
the  English  Church  became  one  for  all  the  nation, 
with  definite  organization,  at  a  time  when,  polit- 
ically and  socially,  the  people  were  divided  into 
several  Kingdoms.  And  thus  the  State  of  Eng- 
land did  not  originally  establish  the  Church,  but 
the  Church  established  the  State. 

As   Stubbs,   the   author  of  the   Constitutional 


10  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

History  of  England,  says,  "the  Church  in  this 
respect  is  older  that  the  State  and  formed  the 
basis  of  the  [N'ational  union  that  followed."  (See 
''Select  Charters,"  etc.,  p.   10.) 

The  history  of  the  Saxon  period  is  little  more 
than  the  story  of  the  gradual  growth  one  into  the 
other  of  the  Church  and  State  of  England.  The 
Bishops  were  the  leaders  in  both.  English 
Churchmen  became  famous  on  the  Continent. 
English  Missionaries  penetrated  the  German  wil- 
derness and  gave  their  lives  for  Christ.  English 
Monks  built  up  great  educational  institutions  at 
home  from  which  went  forth  masters,  like  Alcuin, 
to  lay  the  foimdation,  in  the  schools  of  Charle- 
magTie,  for  the  University  system  of  Europe. 
During  this  three  hundred  years  the  Saxon 
Church  developed  its  own  spirit,  its  own  laws, 
customs,  doctrine  and  ritual.  It  was  almost  en- 
tirely free  from  any  foreign  influence.  One  of 
its  Bishops — Dunstan — on  a  very  public  occasion 
openly  repudiated  a  Papal  sentence.  It  was  in 
a  wonderful  and  unique  way  a  l^ational  Church, 
national  in  its  comprehensiveness,  for  all  English- 
men were  members,  as  well  as  in  its  exclusiveness. 

As  Stubbs  says,  "The  development  of  the 
Church  was  free  and  spontaneous.  The  use  of 
the  native  tongue  in  prayers  and  sermons  is  con- 
tinuous:  the  observance   of  native  festivals   also 


HISTORY  OF   THE  CHURCH  OF   ENGLAND       11 

and  the  reverence  paid  to  JSTative  Saints.  If  the 
stimulating  force  of  foreign  intercourse  was  want- 
ing, the  intensity  with  which  the  Church  threw 
itself  into  the  interest  of  the  nation  more  than 
made  up  for  what  was  lacking.  The  Church  was 
the  school  and  nurserj  of  patriots — the  depository 
of  old  traditional  glories,  and  the  refuge  of  the 
persecuted.  Its  liberty  was  the  only  form,  in  the 
evil  days  that  followed,  in  Avhich  the  traditions 
of  the  ancient  freedom  lingered,  and  the  Church 
had  its  duty  to  educate  the  growing  nation  for 
its  distant  destiny  as  the  teacher  and  herald  of 
freedom  to  all  the  world."  (Constitut.  Hist. 
V.  I.,  p.  268.) 

THE  AXOLO-ROMAX  PERIOD 
10G6  A.  D.— 1534  A.  D. 

More  than  nine  generations  separate  the 
Church  of  Theodore  from  the  Church  of  Anselm, 
and  to  the  steadily  strengthening  spirit  of  national 
love  and  pride,  the  English  Church  owed  much 
of  her  independence,  and  her  restiveness  under 
foreign  dictation  and  influence  during  the  period 
of  the  Xorman  rule. 

Since  the  Council  of  Hatfield  in  A.  D.  680, 
when  the  simple  statement  of  the  Ecumenical 
Councils  was  the  sufficient  standard  of  faith  for 
the  National  Church,  a  great  change  had  come 
over  that   Church   at    Eome,   which   was   rightly 


12  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

regarded  as  the  Mother  Church  of  Western  Chris- 
tendom. Charlemagne  and  Leo  III.  together  had 
launched  the  idea  of  the  Holy  Koman  Empire  in 
the  year  800  A.  D.,  and  jealousy  for  the  glory 
of  this  fiction  had  now  for  two  centuries  enlisted 
all  the  efforts  in  power  and  craft  of  Popes  and 
German  Emperors.  More  and  more  it  seemed 
that  the  Christian  religion  would  itself  be  lost  in 
the  contest  between  secular  tyranny  and  Ecclesi- 
astical adroitness.  As  the  power  of  the  Emperors 
increased  in  material  resources  and  concentration, 
the  claims  of  the  Bishops  of  Eome  rose  to  meet 
and  resist  it.  The  Forged  Decretals  appeared  in 
the  ninth  century.  The  appeal  to  the  Donation 
of  Constantine  and  the  Sardican  Canon  was  freely 
and  recklessly  made  as  early  as  the  tenth  century. 
And  yet  Eome  declined.  The  Papacy  itself  was 
threatened  with  entire  secularization  and  extinc- 
tion as  a  spiritual  power.  The  pitiful  career  of 
the  debauched  and  lawless  Theophylact,  as  Pope 
Benedict  IX.,  seemed  to  be  the  last  act  in  a 
tragedy  wherein  the  Church  died,  and  her  author- 
ity went  to  a  half  barbarous  Emperor  and  all  her 
remaining  piety  to  the  Monastic  Orders. 

From  this  wreck  of  religion  and  morals,  the 
Tuscan  Monk,  Hildebrand,  rescued  the  Church 
on  the  Continent  of  Europe.  His  control  of  the 
Papacy  began  in  1048  A.  D.  with  Leo  IX.,  and 


HISTORY   OF  THE   CHURCH   OF  ENGLAND       13 

lasted  through  the  reigns  of  four  Popes  until 
1073  A.  D.,  when  he,  himself,  was  ready  for  the 
Pontifical  Chair.  Hildebrand  was  a  strong,  eager, 
masterful  character,  wholly  in  earnest  and  wholly 
consecrated  to  one  idea.  On  the  ruins  of  the  holy 
league  of  Charlemagne  and  Leo  he  built  up  and 
organized  a  great  new  secular  dominion,  guarded 
by  spiritual  sanctions,  coining  its  o^\ai  money, 
subsidizing  its  armies,  protecting  spiritual  in- 
terests with  secular  penalties — a  dominion  com- 
pact, complete,  tremendous,  and  destined  to  bring 
the  whole  of  Western  Christendom  under  its  in- 
fluence and  control.'  In  A.  D.  1054  the  Ancient 
Greek  Church  was  driven  into  schism  by  the 
terms  of  communion  imposed  upon  it.  The  youth 
of  the  Emperor  Henry  encouraged  the  disregard 
of  the  Imperial  authority.  The  enforced  celibacy 
of  the  Clergy  and  the  attack  on  the  national  Moz- 
arabic  liturgy  of  Spain,  were  parts  of  the  gTeat 
design,  which  gave  the  Papacy  the  unity  of  or- 
ganization and  the  military  precision,  that  sent 
legates  plenipotentiary  to  every  Court  and  held 
them  absolutely  subject  to  the  authority  at  Rome. 
These  were  the  conditions  under  which  Wil- 
liam the  Gorman  made  his  invasion  into  England, 
under  the   form  of  law  and  with  the  expressed 


SSpe  Phillimore.  Internafwnnl  Law.  p.  53, 


14  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

sanction  of  the  Pope.  The  Xormau  Conquest 
extended  both  to  Church  and  State.  Every 
Saxon  Bishop,  with  one  exception,  was  deposed 
and  his  See  given  to  a  foreigner.  The  free  Saxon 
Church  of  England  became  in  name  and  govern- 
ment, not  a  sister  as  aforetime,  but  a  subject  to 
the  Roman  See.  The  history  of  the  Anglo- 
Xorman  or  Anglo-Roman  Church  corresponds 
almost  precisely  with  the  history  of  the  decline 
and  the  revival  of  national  feeling.  x\s  long  as 
the  Xormans  held  Saxons  in  slavery  and  made 
the  French  language  the  language  of  the  Court, 
and  regarded  England  only  as  a  temporary  abiding 
place,  so  long  did  the  Church  of  England  appear 
to  be  a  willing  vassal  of  the  Papacy.  The  record 
becomes  confused  with  the  conflicts  of  Roman 
Archbishops  and  Xorman  Sovereigns;  and,  as  in 
the  time  of  Theodore,  the  national  idea  found 
lodgment  in  the  minds  of  Churchmen  before  it 
was  realized  by  the  Kings.  King  John,  for  ex- 
ample, was  a  foreigner,  an  alien,  who  was  ready 
to  surrender  his  croA\Ti  and  throne  to  an  Italian 
Potentate;  but  Stephen  Langton,  Archbishop 
though  he  was,  with  the  Papal  Pallium — Stephen 
Langton,  with  the  patriotic  instinct  of  an  Eng- 
lishman who  loved  England  and  the  English 
Church,  was  willing  to  defy,  and  did  defy,  a 
Papal  sentence  in  order  to  wrest  from  John  the 


HISTORY   OF   THE   CHURCH   OF   ENGLAND       lo 

Magna  Charia,  the  Charter  of  Ecclesiastical  as 
well  as  of  Civil  liberty,  and  the  first  sentence  in 
the  Charter  asserts  the  freedom  of  the  Church 
of  England.  As  a  rule,  however,  we  must  look 
for  the  true  national  spirit  in  the  lower  Clergy 
and  in  the  lower  house  of  Convocation.  The 
really  Gorman  Kings  and  the  foreign  Ecclesi- 
astics, who  occuj)ied  English  Bishoprics,  repre- 
senting the  Pope,  conspired  to  repress  and  sub- 
jugate the  parochial  Clergy.  The  new  Mendicant 
Orders,  also,  independent  emissaries  of  the  Pope, 
were  a  continual  menace  to  the  Clergy  and  their 
influence.  In  many  instances  the  Archbishops, 
fighting  for  the  spiritual  privileges  of  the  Church 
against  the  royal  tyranny,  win  our  reluctant  sym- 
pathy, even  when  they  appeal  to  Rome  to  sustain 
them.  It  is  hard  to  choose  between  Beckett  and 
King  Henry — although  we  know  that  Henry's 
victory,  though  temporary,  was  best  for  the 
Church  in  the  end.  We  are  drawn  to  Archbishop 
Anselm  and  we  are  disgusted  with  King  Rufus, 
although  we  know  that  every  advantage  that  An- 
selm gained  was  one  more  link  in  the  chain  that 
bound  the  Church  to  Rome. 

Broadly,  however,  as  we  view  it  now,  the 
trend  of  affairs  was  plain.  The  Roman  rule  was 
tried  in  England  and  it  failed.  Gradually  the 
Clergy  of  England,  the  Bishops  as  well  as  others. 


16  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

found  that  appeal  to  Eome  was  fruitless ;  that  her 
power  was  worthless ;  that  when  she  had  the  most 
abundant  opportunity,  the  Curia  was  helpless  to 
meet,  to  remedy,  the  evils  of  the  time.  Gradually 
the  ^N'orman  Kings  became  English  Kings,  who 
spoke  the  English  language  and  looked  on  Eng- 
land as  their  home.  Thus  the  National  spirit 
grew  and  strengthened.  And  with  every  increase 
of  it  the  interest  of  the  Church  of  England  and 
the  interest  of  the  crown  of  England  became  a 
common  cause  against  the  foreigner.  It  was 
bound  to  be  only  a  question  of  time  when  the 
ancient  Saxon  liberties  and  the  ancient  Saxon  in- 
dependence should  reassert  themselves,  and  the 
temporary  and  accidental  bondage  should  be 
ended.  So  weak  and  politic,  so  subservient  to  the 
royal  authority  had  the  Court  of  Eome  become 
in  the  thirteenth  century,  that,  had  it  not  been 
galvanized  by  the  new  theological  disputes  of 
that  period,  it  would  have  ceased  to  act  in  Eng- 
land of  its  own  incompetency.  But  the  awaken- 
ing hour  was  coming.  Papal  appeals  and  papal 
authority  in  England  were  doomed.  The  reign 
of  Edward  III.  (1327-1377)  marks  a  distinct 
epoch.  For  the  first  time  the  English  language 
became  recognized  as  the  language  of  the  Court. 
For  the  first  time  the  Xorman  Kings  became  iden- 


HISTORY   OF   THE   CHURCH   OF  ENGLAND       IT 

tifiecl,  in  thought,  in  ambition,  and  interest  with 
their  English  subjects. 

In  A.  D.  1343  the  introduction  of  Papal  bulls 
was  forbidden.  In  A.  D.  1343  the  agents  of  the 
Avignon  Court  were  ignominiously  driven  out  of 
England.  In  A.  D.  1351  the  act  became  a  per- 
petual statute.  In  A.  D.  1352  the  purchasers  of 
Papal  Provisions  were  outlawed.  In  A.  D.  1366 
John  Wiclif  began  his  efforts  for  reform,  which, 
whatever  their  defects,  were  for  the  English  Bible 
and  the  English  language;  for  the  national  and 
ecclesiastical  independence  of  the  English  people. 
In  A.  D.  1392  nearly  sixty  English  Prelates, 
representatives  of  both  the  secular  and  regular 
Clergy,  voted  unanimously  with  Parliament  for 
the  Praemunire  statute  (^"Praemunire" — ^^prae- 
monere-facias,"  i.  c,  Cause  A.  B.  to  be  fore- 
warned to  appear  and  answer,  etc.) — a  statute 
that  in  its  sweeping  enactments  against  Pome,  if 
strictly  enforced,  practically  abolished  the  exercise 
by  the  Poj^e  of  any  jurisdiction  in  England  with- 
out the  consent  of  the  King.  The  Ecclesiastical 
condition  of  England,  as  regards  the  Papacy, 
during  the  thirty  years  at  the  close  of  the  four- 
teenth and  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century 
was  almost  exactly  the  condition  occupied  by  the 
Church  during  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  after 
the  fall  of  Wolsey.     And  it  is  an  interesting  co- 


18  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUKCH 

incidence  that  two  great  Masters  of  English 
Poetry  flourished  when  the  Church  and  Xation 
were  free  from  foreign  control.  Chaucer  closes 
the  fourteenth  century  and  Shakespeare  the  reign 
of  Elizabeth. 

Whatever  may  be  said  about  it,  the  independ- 
ence claimed  and  secured  in  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury was  the  entering  wedge  of  that  Reform 
Movement  which  we  are  wont  to  refer  to  the 
reign  of  Henry  YIII.  The  statute  of  Praemunire 
was  never  repealed.  Eor  a  long  period  perhaps 
it  was  never  used.  It  meant  at  least  this  much: 
the  standing  declaration  on  the  statute  book  that 
the  Papal  control  over  England  w^as  utterly  in- 
compatible with  the  spirit,  the  life,  the  thought 
and  hope  of  the  English  people.  The  English 
revolt  from  the  Papacy  really  began  in  A.  D.  1392. 

THE  PERIOD  OF  REFORM  AND  RECONSTRUCTION 
The  sixteenth  century  opens  upon  a  new  Eng- 
land. The  efforts  of  the  four  Councils  in  the 
fourteenth  century  to  reform  the  Church  had  been 
found  fruitless.  The  only  Pope  who  wanted  re- 
form, Adrian  YL,  had  died  suddenly,  with  sig- 
nificant mystery,  and  carried  the  hope  away  with 
him  from  the  Papal  Chair.  The  Pagan  renais- 
sance, with  its  classic  intellectualism  and  moral 
selfishness,  had  begun  to  cultivate  the  spirit  of 
Criticism.    Martin  Luther  was  studving  at  Erfurt, 


HISTORY  OF  THE   CHURCH  OF  EXOLAND       19 

preparing  for  his  conversion  to  personal  religion. 
The  Wars  of  the  Roses  had  destroyed  the  power 
of  the  Barons  and  had  enlarged  and  increased  the 
powers  of  the  Crown.  And  England  had  a  new 
King  to  wear  the  Crown — a  young  man,  vigorous, 
active,  strong,  venturesome,  courageous — one  who 
snubbed  the  gTeat  Lords  and  trusted  the  people; 
who  scattered  the  money  in  the  royal  treasury 
and  kept  no  standing  army;  who  outrode  tlie 
huntsmen,  outfenced  the  guards,  and  outargued 
the  theologians;  one  who  was  dignified  without 
effort,  and  yet  who  disarmed  and  defied  opposi- 
tion by  the  daring,  reckless,  jesting  confidence  of 
powder.  The  Eighth  Henry  wdll  fill  any  canvas. 
Modern  historians  have  tried  again  and  again  to 
reduce  him  to  the  measure  of  some  ordinary 
human  mold,  but  they  have  failed  egregiously. 
Froude  loved  him  to  admiration,  Stubbs  declines 
to  judge  him.  Smaller  writers  make  themselves 
ridiculous  in  trying  to  defame  him.  In  all  the 
qualities  that  go  to  make  the  natural  man,  he 
towers  head  and  shoulders  above  his  royal  con- 
temporaries. He  had  no  predecessor  in  England 
except  the  Conqueror  and  no  successor  except  his 
o^vn  Elizabeth.  As  late  as  1519  A.  D.  so  keen 
a  critic  as  Erasmus  does  not  hesitate  to  write  of 
him  as  ''the  fine  soldier,  keen  in  counsel,  strict 
in  admiration,  careful  in  the  choice  of  his  min- 


20  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUHCH 

isters,  anxious  for  the  -peace  of  the  world — a  King- 
fit  to  bring  back  the  golden  age,  the  intelligence 
of  whose  country  will  preserve  the  memory  of  his 
virtues,  and  scholars  will  tell  how  a  King  once 
reigned  there  who  in  his  own  person  revived  the 
virtues  of  the  ancient  heroes."  (Letters  of  Eras- 
mus. ) 

But  his  great  qualities  were  the  qualities  of 
the  natural  man — and  he  showed  all  the  strength 
and  all  the  weakness  of  Esau's  character.  His 
dominant  passion  was  power — his  chief  character- 
istic was  inflexible  resolution  and  self-will;  his 
mortal  sin  was  not  lust  but  pride.  He  was  a 
lion.  Sir  Thomas  Moore  said,  ^'whose  ferocity 
would  increase  with  the  awakening  consciousness 
of  his  power." 

^Yhat  did  the  English  Church  owe  to  Henry 
in  its  effort  to  reform  ?  Well,  Henry  found  the 
laws  on  the  statute  book  which  for  more  than  an 
hundred  years  had  repudiated  the  Papal  inter- 
ference in  English  affairs  and  declared  the  emis- 
saries of  the  Pope  to  be  outlaws  and  felons.  He 
found  the  people  and  the  Clergy  too,  ready  to 
revolt  against  Rome.  He  found  the  records  of 
the  nation  even  in  Saxon  times  upholding  the 
royal  power  against  all  foreign  interference.  He 
found  the  ablest  men  in  England,  both  laymen 
and   ecclesiastics,   full   of   the   new   learning   and 


HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH   OF  ENGLAND       21 

clamoring  for  reform.  He  had  heard  his  own 
intimate  friend,  the  great  Dean  Colet,  preach 
again  and  again,  deploring  the  abuses  of  the  time. 
Evidently  with  such  conditions  and  such  a  King, 
all  that  was  needed  was  a  spark  to  light  the  fire 
to  hurl  the  Church  and  country  into  revolution. 
The  wonder  is,  and  Henry's  claim  to  admiration 
is,  that  the  revolution,  when  it  came,  was  so  well 
controlled. 

The  immediate  cause  of  Henry's  quarrel  with 
the  Pope  was  the  question  of  the  annulment  of 
his  marriage  was  Katharine.  Henry  never  asked 
for  a  divorce.  He  maintained  that  the  marriaae 
from  the  beginning  had  been  invalid.  The  sub- 
ject need  not  detain  us  long.  The  fact  that  a 
King,  who  had  grown  tired  of  his  wife,  six  years 
older  than  himself,  after  sixteeen  years  of  wed- 
lock, demanded  a  release  from  the  contract,  on 
the  ground  that  the  marriage  had  been  at  the  out- 
set a  direct  violation  of  the  Church's  law,  var- 
nished over  by  a  Pope's  decree — this  is  not  very 
wonderful  or  unusual.  The  subsequent  proceed- 
ings are  less  creditable  if  anything  to  the  Pope 
than  to  Henry.  Clement  refused  to  grant  the 
divorce,  not  on  any  religious  or  moral  ground,  but 
for  fear  of  Katharine's  nephew,  Charles,  Emperor 
of  Germany.  It  was  an  evil  and  unjust  thing, 
so  to  humble  a  faithful  wife  and  Queen — divorces 


22  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

are  always  evil  things ;  but  when  we  come  to  give 
our  verdict  we  shall  have  to  nail  our  sentence  at 
the  door  of  that  Eoman  Court  which  first  began 
to  trifle  with  the  Church's  law  that  guarded  the 
marriage  bond. 

Henry  believed  in  himself,  and  in  the  affec- 
tions of  his  people — that  new  middle  class  that 
made  his  throne  secure.  The  lion  more  and  more 
realized,  as  he  was  forced  to  test  his  power. 
Henry  was  a  playful  tyrant.  His  moral  scrupu- 
losity is  striking.  He  was  ever  singularly  respect- 
ful to  the  law.  'No  act  of  his  can  be  named  that 
did  not  at  least  have  the  form  of  precedent.  It 
w^as  the  law  of  praemunire  that  he  used  to  ruin 
Wolsey  and  to  frighten  the  reluctant  members  of 
Convocation  and  Parliament  to  submission.  It 
w^as  by  legal  precedents  that  the  monasteries  were 
dissolved.  It  was  by  law  that  his  wives  were  put 
away  or  condemned  to  death.  It  was  by  ancient 
statute  that  the  title  of  Supreme  Head  of  the 
Church  was  defended  and  sustained.  Every  arti- 
cle of  the  Catholic  Faith  was  jealously  maintained, 
and  the  very  Act  that  repudiated  the  Pope's 
jurisdiction  recited  the  precedents  of  the  councils 
of  the  Catholic  Church.  No  step  was  taken  in 
spiritual  matters  without  the  formal  consent  of 
Convocation,  the  Church's  council.  And  it  ought 
to  be  said,  that,  while  the  Emperor  of  Germany 


HISTORY  OF  THE   CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND       23 

was  busy  issuing  doctrinal  statements  and  exploit- 
ing his  theological  learning,  Henry  left  doctrine 
to  his  Bishops,  only  taking  care  that  it  was  not 
in  conflict  with  the  Roman  faith. 

For  Henry  never  for  one  moment  thought  that 
he  was  less  a  son  of  Rome  in  his  spiritual  faith  and 
hope,  because  he  happened  to  rebel  against  Papal 
jurisdiction.  There  had  been  Kings  of  France 
and  Germany,  and  of  England  too,  who  had  done 
as  much  as  he  did,  e.g.,  Frederick  II.  and  Philip 
IV.  He  had  no  sympathy  with  Lutheranism. 
He  wanted  no  new  system  of  religion.  He  did 
not  even  oppose  or  deny  the  spiritual  authority 
of  the  Pope.  He  wanted  to  have  his  own  way 
in  his  own  kingdom,  and  he  got  what  he  wanted. 
He  invented  an  impossible  regime,  that  has  been 
aptly  called  ^Topery  without  a  Pope."  Indirectly, 
however,  and  unwittingly,  he  paved  the  way  for 
the  reformation  that  succeeded. 

Stubbs'  characterization  of  Henry  is  the  best 
that  has  yet  been  written.  He  says,  "I  do  not 
believe  him  to  have  been  a  monster  of  lust  and 
blood  as  so  many  Roman  Catholic  writers  regard 
him.  He  was  not  abnormally  profligate;  in  this 
region  of  morality  he  was  not  better  perhaps  than 
Charles  V.,  but  he  was  much  better  than  Francis  I. 
and  Philip  II.  and  Henry  IV.  I  seem  to  see  in 
him  a  grand,  gross  figure,  very  far  removed  from 


24  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

ordinary  human  sympathies;  self -engrossed,  self- 
confident,  self-willed,  miscrupulons  in  act,  violent 
and  crafty,  justifying  to  himself  by  his  belief  in 
himself,  both  unscrupulousness,  violence  and  craft. 
And  with  all  this,  as  needs  must  have  been,  a  very 
unhappy  man,  wretched  in  his  family,  wretched 
in  his  loneliness — that  awful  loneliness  in  which 
a  King  lives,  and  which  the  worst  as  well  as  the 
best  of  despots  realize.  Have  I  drawn  the  outline 
of  a  monster  ^  Well,  perhaps ;  but  not  the  popular 
notion  of  this  particular  portent :  A  strong,  high- 
spirited,  ruthless,  disappointed,  solitary  creature — 
a  thing  to  hate,  or  to  pity,  or  to  smile  at,  or  to 
shudder  at,  or  to  w^onder  at,  but  not  to  judge." 
(Lectures,  p.  81.) 

What  then  did  Henry  VIII.  do  for  the  Church 
of  England? 

Well,  he  threw  the  Church  on  herself,  com- 
pelled her  to  realize  her  independence,  her  auton- 
omy. He  emphasized  and  accentuated  the  na- 
tional idea.  He  made  it  possible  for  English 
Bishops  and  laymen  to  undertake  great  changes 
in  doctrinal  and  ritual  matters  without  fearing 
or  regarding  foreign  approval  or  disapproval. 
Above  all,  in  a  time  of  vast  upheavals — of  war 
and  bloodshed,  of  deadly  struggles  and  savage 
riots — Henry  VIII.  had  the  judgment,  the  tact, 
the  popularity  and  power  with  his  subjects  to  hold 


HISTORY  OF  THE   CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND      25 

in  check  partisan  and  fanatical  movements, and 
during  fifteen  years  of  religious  unrest  and 
change,  to  keep  the  institutions  of  the  Church  and 
the  Church  itself  from  ruin.  As  Cardinal  Man- 
ning once  said,  and  historical  facts  do  not  change 
with  the  change  of  religion,  'The  Crown  and 
Church  of  England,  with  a  steady  opposition,  re- 
sisted the  entrance  and  encroachment  of  the  sec- 
ularized ecclesiastical  power  of  the  Pope  in  Eng- 
land. The  last  rejection  of  it  was  no  more  than 
a  successful  effort  after  many  a  failure  in  struggles 
of  like  kind.  And  it  was  an  act  taken  by  men 
who  were  sound,  according  to  Eoman  doctrines, 
on  all  other  points."  ' 

When  Henry  VIII.  died,  in  1546,  the  net 
results  of  the  twelve  years  movement  were : 

(1)  The  Papal  Power  in  England  was  de- 
stroyed and  the  Church  of  England  was  declared 
competent  to  administer  her  own  affairs.  The 
Headship  of  the  King  was  accepted  with  the  quali- 
fying phrase,  ''So  far  as  the  law  of  Christ  will 
allow" ; 

(2)  The  continuity  of  the  Episcopate  was  kept 
without  a  break; 

(3)  The  Bible  was  printed  in  English  and 
commanded  to  be  read  in  all  the  churches ; 


-  Manning-,  Unity  of  the  Church;  p.  296, 


20  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

(4)  The  Creed,  Lord's  Prayer,  and  Ten  Com- 
mandments were  jDrinted  in  English,  and  recited 
slowly  in  Church  so  that  the  people  could  mem- 
orize them,  and  school-masters  had  to  teach  them 
to  the  children ; 

(5)  Superstitious  image- worship  and  pilgrim- 
ages were  forbidden.  And  all  this  was  prefaced 
by  the  words  of  the  Statute,  ''\vg  do  not  intend 
to  decline  or  vary  from  the  Catholic  Faith  of 
Christendom." 

Thus  it  happened  that  the  first  blow  for  free- 
dom was  struck  in  the  reign  of  Henry,  but  it  was 
more  than  an  hundred  years  before  the  readjust- 
ment of  her  doctrinal  and  ritual  sj^stem  to  the 
changed  conditions  of  her  life  was  completed. 
The  history  of  that  readjustment  is  the  history 
of  constitutional  liberty;  it  is  marked  by  ebbs 
and  flows,  by  foreign  influence  and  dissension,  by 
political  comi^lications,  by  heroisms  and  martyr- 
doms, but  the  result  was  worth  it  all.  After  the 
reign  of  Edward  had  given  the  Prayer  Book  and 
had  taught  the  dangerous  tendency  of  foreign  in- 
fluence towards  fanatical  disintegration,  and  after 
the  brief  and  morbid  reaction  under  Mary  had 
burnt  the  hatred  of  Kome  and  Koman  methods 
into  the  hearts  of  the  people,  it  would  have  seemed 
that  the  wise  moderation  of  Elizabeth's  policy 
would  have  settled  the  disputes  forever. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  EXGL.\:sD       27 

Her  accession  was  marked  immediately  by 
the  public  assertion  of  the  historic  continuity 
from  the  past  of  the  Church  of  the  English  peo- 
ple from  the  time  of  Joseph  of  Arimathea — by 
the  emphatic  definition  of  the  Church's  spiritual 
character  as  distinct  from  state  control,  and  by  the 
endorsement  of  that  reform  in  doctrine  and  prac- 
tice, for  which  the  Roman  Church  herself  was 
striving  and  which  the  people  at  large  had  come 
to  understand  and  approve.  Of  9,000  Clergy  in 
England  at  her  accession  only  189  refused  to  con- 
form to  the  revised  system  of  worship.  For 
eleven  years  there  was  peace  and  harmony  and 
progress. 

Eobert  Parsons,  the  celebrated  Jesuit  (1593) 
makes  one  of  his  characters  say,  ^'I  do  well  re- 
member the  first  dozen  years  of  her  Highness' 
reign:  how  happy,  how  pleasant,  how  quiet  they 
were,  with  all  manner  of  comfort  and  consolation. 
There  was  no  mention  then  of  factions  in  relig- 
ion ;  neither  was  any  man  much  noted  or  rejected 
for  that  cause,  so  otherwise  his  conversation  was 
civil  and  courteous.  Xo  suspicion  of  treason,  no 
talk  of  bloodshed,  no  complaint  of  troubles,  mis- 
eries, or  vexations.  All  was  peace,  all  was  love, 
all  was  joy,  all  was  delight." 

There  was,  according  to  William  Watson,  the 
Roman  Catholic  priest  (1602),  one  of  her  bitter- 


28  THE  P:PISC0PAL  CHURCH 

est  euemies,  "A'o  talk  of  treasons  or  couspiracics, 
no  jealousies  nor  suspicions,  no  envy  nor  supplan- 
tations,  no  fear  of  murdering,  nor  massacring,  no 
question  of  conscience  or  religion.  But  all  lived 
in  great  content  and  right  good  fellowship  was 
amongst  them."  (Ingram  ''England  and  Eome," 
p.  250.) 

That  peace  was  broken  bv  the  Pope's  Bull, 
Pius  v.,  1570,  which  excommunicated  the  Queen, 
declared  the  throne  vacant,  absolved  her  subjects 
from  all  allegiance,  duty  and  obedience,  and  in- 
cited them  to  rebellion,  and  plunged  the  land  into 
a  storm  of  plots,  conspiracies,  homicides,  sacrilege, 
and  assassination,  which  made  Pope  Urban  VIII. 
himself  declare  in  A.  D.  1641  that  ''he  bewailed 
with  'tears  of  blood'  the  conduct  of  his  predeces- 
sors of  the  sixteenth  century  towards  England 
and  her  people." 

The  author  of  all  religious  discord  in  England 
was  foreign  influence.  The  disciples  of  Calvin 
were  not  slow  to  follow  the  subjects  of  Pope  Pius 
into  dissent  and  rebellion.  Puritanism,  at  first 
a  distinctly  personal  following  of  Calvin  and 
Zwinglius,  was  quite  as  much  of  a  foreign  move- 
ment as  the  Italian  influences  operating  from 
Rome.  Both  were  attacks  upon  the  national  char- 
acter and  constitution  of  the  Church.  Both  at- 
tempted with  varying  success  to  destroy  the  na- 


HISTORY  OF  THE   CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND      29 

tional  idea,  that  had  been  the  safeguard  and  glory 
of  religion  in  England  since  the  time  of  Theodore. 

The  original  puritanism  practically  died  ont  in 
Elizabeth's  reign.  Cartwright,  the  founder  of 
English  Presbyterianism,  and  Browne,  the  founder 
of  Congregationalism,  returned  to  and  died  in  the 
Communion  of  the  English  Church. 

The  new  Puritanism  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury was  first  of  all  a  political  movement  in  which 
good  men  and  loyal  Churchmen,  fighting  for 
ancient  liberties,  found  themselves  swept  away  by 
the  champions  of  a  religious  fanaticism,  whose 
first  principle  of  faith  contradicted  the  very  idea 
of  constitutional  liberty.  Whatever  were  the 
faults  of  Laud,  and  he  certainly  was  human,  there 
is  no  doubt,  as  Professor  Rawson  Gardiner  says 
(History  of  England,  v.  II.,  p.  64),  that  his 
theological  position  was  essentially  that  of  Hooker, 
and  Cranmer,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  old 
man  laid  down  his  life  in  protest  and  defiance 
against  a  conception  of  religion  that  would  have 
chained  the  English  Church  forever  under  the 
iron  yoke  of  Calvinism — a  conception  of  religion, 
which  we  universally  repudiate  to-day  as  contra- 
dictory of  the  truth,  the  genuineness,  the  bright- 
ness of  the  English  character.  The  "streak  of 
intellectual  vulgarity,"  as  Matthew  Arnold  calls 
it,  which  runs  through  Macaulay's  History  has 


30  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

utterly  misrepresented  the  character  and  purpose 
and  life  of  William  Laud. 

Into  the  political  movements  of  the  reigns  of 
James  and  Charles  I.  and  Cromwell  we  need  not 
enter.  The  Church  of  England  came  out  of  the 
furnace  of  affliction  with  her  continuity  unbroken 
and  her  faith  defined  and  her  spirit  chastened 
and  purified.  The  character  of  the  Church  in  the 
early  years  of  Queen  Anne's  reign  vindicated  all 
her  previous  history.  The  learning  of  her  great 
divines  and  the  frequency  and  dignity  of  her 
services,  the  breadth  and  freshness  and  freedom 
of  her  outward  life,  her  missionary  zeal,  and  her 
works  of  charity  and  education,  gained  for  her 
the  honor  and  veneration  of  Christians  of  every 
name. 

In  A.  D.  1717,  DuPin,  Head  of  the  Theological 
College  of  the  Sorbonne,  and  other  leaders  of  the 
Church  of  France,  whose  national  spirit  had 
chafed  and  fretted  under  the  Papal  Rule  for  at 
least  six  hundred  years,  and  who  had  talked  of 
reformation  before  it  was  begun  in  England,  des- 
pairing of  any  self-respecting  alliance  with  Rome, 
made  overtures  for  union  with  the  English  Church 
on  the  common  ground  of  loyalty  to  the  Catholic 
faith  and  constitution,  with  reservation  of  na- 
tional independence.  (See  Hore  "Eighteen  Cen- 
turies,"  etc.,  p.   493.)      So,   also,   in   1706   A.  D. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF   ENGLAND       31 

Frederick  I.  of  Prussia,  with  the  advice  and 
assistance  of  many  of  the  ablest  men  in  his  King- 
dom, both  Clergymen  and  laymen,  among  whom 
Leibnitz  was  conspicuous,  formally  proposed  union 
between  German  Protestants  and  the  Church  of 
England,  practically  on  the  ground  proposed  in 
the  so-called  Quadrilateral  of  A.  D.  1886.  The 
Germans  expressed  their  willingness  to  receive 
the  Episcopate.  The  Prayer  Book  was  trans- 
lated into  the  German  language;  and  much  en- 
thusiasm was  manifested  in  England  over  this 
great  step  towards  the  reunion  of  Christendom. 
Political  complications,  however,  and  the  deaths 
of  the  prominent  leaders  prevented  either  of  these 
movements  from  producing  any  practical  results. 
Yet  the  facts  may  be  taken  as  clear  evidence  of 
the  true  insight  of  DeMaistre^s  prophecy,  that  if 
reunion  shall  ever  be  accomplished,  it  will  be 
through  the  mediation  of  the  Church  of  England. 
The  eighteenth  century  proved  to  be,  in  some 
respects  worse  for  the  Church  than  any  she  had 
before  lived  through.  That  very  national  idea, 
which  had  been  her  glorj^  from  the  time  of 
Theodore,  became,  in  the  union  of  Church  and 
State  under  new  conditions,  a  hindrance  and  men- 
ace to  her  life.  When  the  Hanoverian  Kings, 
who  like  the  early  E'orman  Kings  could  not  even 
speak  English,  found  that  they  could  not  coerce 


32  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

Churclimen  into  Erastianism,  they  took  away 
freedom  of  speecli  and  suppressed  Convocation, 
the  Church's  Council,  for  over  one  hundred  years. 
This  was  the  period  of  triumphant  infidelity, 
which  created  the  reason  for,  and  in  its  reaction, 
the  inspiration  of  Methodism.  Yet  the  Church 
was  capable  without  foreign  influence  or  aid  of 
renewal  and  reform  within  herself.  The  Evan- 
gelical revival  of  A.  D.  1780  and  the  Oxford 
Movement  (A.  D.  1833)  have  multiplied  her 
activities  and  proved  her  power.  Her  very  trials 
and  her  recovery  from  them  have  demonstrated 
under  God  her  spiritual  claims.  Moreover  she 
has  demonstrated  that  she  is  a  ^'fruit-tree  yielding 
fruit,  whose  seed  is  in  itself"  (Gen.  1:  11):  for 
in  A.  D.  1784  Samuel  Seabury  was  consecrated 
the  first  Bishop  for  the  Church  in  the  United 
States  of  America,  and  in  the  course  of  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty  years  this  American  daughter  has 
gro^vn  from  a  mere  handful  to  more  than  one 
million  communicants  and  quite  three  million 
adherents. 

So  the  Church  of  England  has  seen  the  great 
principles  which  she  stood  for,  principles  which 
have  been  too  often  obscured  and  rendered  in- 
eifectual  by  her  misfortune  of  state  connection, 
these  principles  she  has  seen  take  root  and  flourish 
in  a  new  land,  among  a  new  people,  imder  changed 


HISTORY   OF   THE   CHURCH   OF   ENGLAND       33 

conditions,  and  she  has  not  failed  to  learn  a  lesson 
from  it.  It  Avas  only  a  few  ^^ears  ago  that  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  asserting  authority 
which  had  been  unused  for  centuries,  at  once  and 
forever  repudiated,  on  behalf  of  his  Order,  sec- 
ular control,  by  either  CroAvn  or  Court,  over  the 
discharge  of  his  spiritual  office,  and  set  at  rest 
forever  the  question  as  to  the  meaning  of  the 
Sovereign's  relation  to  the  English  Church.  The 
Church  of  England  has  learned  something  from 
this  American  daughter.  To-day  they  stand  to- 
gether— in  mutual  love  and  sympathy — in  the 
bonds  of  mutual  service,  holding  forth  to  English- 
speaking  Christians  of  every  name  the  ideal  of 
our  Saxon  forefathers;  the  ideal  which  is  conse- 
crated to  us  all  by  the  memories  and  traditions 
of  the  greatest  of  our  race ;  the  ideal  which  shines 
dimly  and  imperfectly  perhaps  through  the  mist 
of  so  many  tears,  so  much  dissension:  and,  God 
help  us,  so  much  disunion  among  English-speaking 
Christians :  and  yet,  the  ideal  which,  in  its  rough 
outline  and  fundamental  principles,  is  still  set 
forth  in  that  Church,  which  preserves  the  same 
faith,  the  same  sacraments,  the  same  ministry, 
the  same  worship,  which  Theodore  maintained  at 
Hatfield,  A.  D.  680,  and  Stephen  Langton  de- 
fended at  Kunnymede,  A.  D.  1215.  She  main- 
tains  the    constitutional   system   of   free   ChUrch 


34  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

Government,  secured  primarily  in  the  succession 
of  her  BishopSj  as  in  the  days  of  Cyprian,  A.  D. 
258,  and  Athanasius,  A.  D.  325,  and  Gregory  the 
Great,  A.  D.  596. 

She  stands  to-day  a  worthy  witness  to  the 
truths  for  which  she  has  contended.  She  retains 
a  foremost  place  in  the  Reformed  Christian  world. 
Her  learning  has  not  diminished,  and  her  resolute 
hopefulness  has  not  declined.  Her  missionary 
activities  have  been  enlarged.  Her  practical 
charities  are  multiplied.  Her  reverence  for  the 
great  past  has  not  checked  her  outlook  for  the 
greater  future.  She  has  kept  abreast  of  liberty 
and  progress  and  yet  has  never  for  a  moment 
hesitated  in  her  hold  on  the  Catholic  faith.  The 
principles  for  which  she  stands  and  has  stood  are 
still  the  permanent  safeguards  of  our  Christian 
civilization.  She  holds  before  men  the  Church 
idea,  that  is  the  Social  idea,  the  idea  of  Plato, 
Aristotle,  and  St.  Paul,  as  the  only  satisfaction 
of  the  longing  for  universal  brotherhood  and  the 
only  hope  of  Christ's  conquest  of  the  world.  She 
believes  in  authority  as  not  inconsistent  with  true 
freedom,  in  liberty  without  license,  and  law  Avith- 
out  despotism.  She  exhorts  her  people  to  the 
practical  duties  of  the  Christian  life  in  a  spirit 
of  confidence,  sustained  and  fostered  by  sacra- 
mental and  solemn  services,  and  not  by  emphasis 


HISTORY   OF   THE   CHURCH   OF  ENGLAND       35 

put  upon  feeling  at  the  expense  of  conscience. 
She  trusts  more  to  sober  training  in  religion  than 
to  passionate  upheavals.  She  comes  to  men,  not 
to  court  popularity  by  adapting  herself  to  their 
natural  instincts  and  prejudices,  but  to  reform 
and  uplift  them,  and  to  give  them  something 
above  the  measure  of  their  ordinary  taste  and 
temperament,  and  to  furnish  them  with  an  ideal 
to  follow.  She  believes  in  the  solemn  splendor 
of  worship,  the  chaste  dignity  of  her  liturgy,  the 
inspiration  of  all  true  art,  and  the  culture  of  all 
true  education.  Above  all  she  makes  little  of  the 
metaphysical  doctrinal  definitions  that  have  vexed 
and  divided  Christendom  during  the  past  three 
hundred  years,  believing  that  Christianity  is  first 
of  all  a  life,  an  institution,  and  that  the  life  is 
more  than  meat  and  the  body  is  more  than  raiment. 
The  maintenance  of  these  principles  was  w^orth 
the  sufferings  of  Parker  and  the  martyrdom  of 
Laud.  They  were  great  enough  to  demand  and 
deserve  the  patient  waiting  of  our  American  fore- 
fathers— so  great  and  fruitful,  that  in  spite  of 
misconception  and  distrust,  they  have  taken  root 
in  this  new  land,  and,  freed  from  the  restraint 
of  State  connection  and  Koyal  interference,  they 
have  become,  even  to  those  who  at  first  revolted 
from  them,  a  great  and  growing  factor  in  our 
permanent  national  life. 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER 

(1)  Its  History 

(2)  The  Reformation  which  produced  it 

(3)  The  needs  which  it  supplied 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER 

HE  Book  of  Common  Prayer  is,  in  one 
aspect  of  it,  the  creation  of  the  dawn- 
ing democracy  of  the  English-speak- 
ing people.  It  takes  rank  with  King 
James'  version  of  the  Bible  as  one  of  the  two 
noblest  achievements  of  English  literature.  It 
enshrines  the  faith,  the  hope,  the  worship  Avhich 
five  generations  of  Englishmen — through  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-five  stormy  years — planned  and 
wrought  and  sacrificed  to  establish,  as  the  x\n- 
glican  interpretation  of  Christianity.  For  these 
reasons,  among  others,  the  Prayer  Book  is  the 
common  inheritance,  and  should  be  the  pride,  of 
all  English-speaking  Christians — as  it  is  certainly 
a  literary  and  religious  memorial  of  such  surpass- 
ing interest  and  value  that  no  true  culture  can  af- 
ford to  neglect  it.  To  be  ignorant  of  the  history  and 
contents  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  is  hardly 
less  barbarous  than  to  be  unfamiliar  with  the  Eng- 
lish Bible  and  the  works  of  Shakespeare. 

And,  therefore,  a  body  of  literature  has  been 
created  as  to  the  sources  and  meaning  and  pur- 
pose of  the  Prayer  Book,  unsurpassed  for  learning 


40  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

and  eloquence,  by  great  Avriters — lawyers,  states- 
men, and  ecclesiastics — and,  to  quote  Dr.  J.  H. 
Benton's  admirable  monograph,'  "those  who  know 
it  best  love  it  best."  "It  has  profoundly  influ- 
enced not  only  the  moral,  but  the  intellectual,  so- 
cial, and  political  life  of  England  and  of  the 
world."  ''It  has  affected  diplomacy  and  states- 
manship. It  has  gone  wherever  the  English  lan- 
guage has  gone  and  has  been  translated  also  into 
nearly  all  the  written  languages  of  the  w^orld.  Its 
history  is  part  of  the  warp  and  woof  of  the  history 
of  the  English  people  and  nation,  w^hich  no  one 
can  understand  who  does  not  know  its  story."  It 
has  been  twice  proscribed  by  law,  all  copies  of  it 
ordered  to  be  destroyed  and  its  use  in  public  or 
private  devotions  made  a  crime;  but  it  has,  with 
few  substantial  alterations,  remained  unchanged 
in  its  original  English  form  for  three  hundred 
and  sixty  years. 

The  Christian  Church  has  always  used  a 
liturgy.  St.  Luke  describes  the  first  Christians 
as  continuing  in  'Hlie  prayers,"  and  the  I^ew  Tes- 
tament abounds  in  references  to  the  participation 
of  the  people  in  the  forms  of  public  worship, 
many  of  which  they  inherited  from  the  Jewish 
Church. 


^  The  Book  of  Common  Frai/cr.     J.  H.  Benton,  LL.D. 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER       41 

From  the  beginning  the  central  service  was 
the  service  of  the  Holy  Communion,  known  as 
the  Liturgy  Proper,  and  the  daily  offices  were 
based  on  that. 

The  liturgies  of  Christendom  may  be  gi'ouped 
under  four  heads,  viz. :  the  Liturgy  of  St.  James, 
the  Liturgy  of  St.  Mark,  the  Liturgy  of  St.  Peter, 
and  the  Liturgy  of  St.  John — all  of  which  are  still 
in  use  in  the  historic  churches  of  the  world — and 
all  of  them  are  of  Eastern  origin,  because,  as  you 
know,  Christianity  is  an  Eastern  religion  and  the 
Greek  language  was  its  original  vehicle  for  in- 
tellectual and  devotional  expression.  The  Poman 
Church,  using  the  Latin  language,  is  a  later  devel- 
opment. The  Poman  Christians  of  the  first  cen- 
tury spoke  Greek,  and  the  early  Popes  were  not 
Italians  but  Greeks.  The  very  name  "Pope"  is 
a  Greek  word — a  common  title  to  this  day  given 
to  every  pastor  in  the  Eastern  Church.  (Stanley.)' 

A  combination  of  circumstances,  which  I  shall 
not  take  the  time  to  explain  in  this  lecture,  made 
the  Mediaeval  Church  in  the  West — certainly  from 
A.  D.  1054  to  A.  D.  1518 — a  close  corporation, 
in  which  the  laity  had  little  part,  except  to  obey 
orders  and  submit.  Worship  for  the  layman  was 
a  formal  attendance  upon  a  ceremonial  conducted 


^  See  Dr.  Hart's  admirable  volume,  The  Book  of  Common 
Prayer. 


42  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

by  the  priests,  in  their  own  way  and  in  a  language 
virtually  unknown  to  any  but  themselves.  As  for 
the  daily  prayers,  the  clergy  had  an  entire  mon- 
opoly of  them,  and  not  all  the  clergy — only  the 
regulars,  or  members  of  religious  orders — observed 
them  faithfully.  The  comparative  isolation  of 
England  gave  to  its  Church  an  unique  independ- 
ence of  development,  and  even  in  the  period  of 
the  Pope's  most  autocratic  supremacy,  the  Ecclesia 
Anglicana — i.e.,  the  English  Church —  was  recog- 
nized in  the  public  law  as  an  independent  institu- 
tion. In  1085  A.  D.  a  great  Bishop  of  Salisbury 
put  forth  a  service  book  peculiarly  English  and 
un-Eoman,  known  as  the  book  of  Sarum,  but  of 
course,  it  was  not  in  English,  because  at  that  time 
the  English  language  had  not  reached  a  literary 
form.  The  Magna  Charta,  our  charter  of  liberty, 
in  1215,  which  was  wrung  from  King  John,  and 
in  open  defiance  of  the  Pope,  begins  with  the  de- 
mand that  the  Church  of  England  shall  have  her 
rights  entire  and  her  liberties  uninjured.  All 
through  the  early  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
Church  there  w^ere  sporadic  attempts  to  give  the 
people  translations  of  the  Bible  in  the  common 
tongue  and  to  popularize  the  service  of  the  Church 
by  putting  it  into  a  language  "understanded  of 
the  people."  These  service  books  were  called 
^Trymers,"  and  have  been  described  as  "The  Lay 


THE  BOOK  OF  C0M:\10X  PRAYPJR  43 

Polks  Prayer  Books."  They  contained  some  of 
the  psalms  and  a  litany,  but  none  of  the  priests' 
or  Bishops'  Offices,  nor  any  of  the  directions  for 
the  conduct  of  worship,  and  they  were  all  in  manu- 
script, because  there  was  no  printed  book  in  Eng- 
land until  A.  D.  1474. 

The  last  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century  is  one 
of  the  great  epochs  in  the  history  of  mankind.  It 
witnessed  the  revival  of  Greek  learning,  and 
through  Greek  learning,  the  return  to  the  study  of 
the  primitive  truth  of  Christianity.  So  it  was 
said,  when  Erasmus'  first  edition  of  the  ^ew  Tes- 
tament was  published  in  1516,  '^Greece  rose  from 
the  dead  with  the  Isew  Testament  in  her  right 
hand."  It  witnessed  the  invention  of  printing, 
the  use  of  the  mariner's  compass,  the  discovery  of 
America,  and,  we  may  say,  the  birth  of  Martin 
Luther.  The  whole  Western  world  waked  up  and 
began  a  revolution,  of  which  the  religious  move- 
ment, called  the  Eeformation,  was  one  manifesta- 
tion. Council  after  council  had  met  in  the  fif- 
teenth century  to  reform  ecclesiastical  abuses,  but 
all  of  them  were  dominated  and  strangled  by 
Kome.  Then  in  1517  Luther  issued  his  challenge. 
In  1520  he  was  excommunicated  by  the  Pope,  and 
one  of  his  fiercest  enemies  was  the  young  and 
popular  King  of  England,  Henry  VIII.  It 
looked  at  first  as  if  Henry  would  use  his  extraor- 


44  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

dinary  popularity  and  power  to  stamp  out  the 
new  movement  in  England,  for  he  was  a  special 
friend  of  Rome.  The  Pope  had  over-ridden  the 
Church's  written  law  and  given  Henry  a  special 
dispensation  to  marry  his  brother's  widow.  He 
had  also  conferred  a  new  title  upon  Henry  and 
proclaimed  him  as  ''Defender  of  the  Faith." 

It  was  an  astounding  event,  therefore,  to  the 
men  of  that  time,  when  this  'Tet  of  the  Papacy" 
resented  the  new  Pope's  refusal  to  permit  him  to 
put  away  his  wife,  as  he  said,  ''because  of  con- 
scientious scruples,"  and  encouraged  the  Reforma- 
tion moA^ement  in  England,  in  order  to  spite  the 
Pope.  Henry  played  a  political  game  for  his  own 
personal  ends,  but  to  the  last  his  religious  con- 
victions Avere  hostile  to  the  Reformation.  During 
the  later  years  of  his  reign  he  tried  to  check  the 
movement,  but  it  was  too  late.  The  independence 
of  the  Church  of  England  had  become  an  accom- 
plished fact.  The  Bible  had  been  given  to  the 
people  in  English,  and  the  Litany  and  other  parts 
of  the  public  service,  and  there  was  a  widespread 
and  earnest  demand  for  further  reformation. 

Henry  died  January  28,  1547,  and  his  son 
succeeded  him  as  Edward  VI. 

In  December  of  that  year  a  parliamentary 
Act  was  passed  authorizing  the  administration  of 
the  IIolv  Communion  in  both  kinds,  and  a  ser- 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER  45 

vice  book  of  the  Holy  Communion  in  the  Eng- 
lish language  was  issued  in  March,  1548.  Arch- 
bishop Cranmer  and  ''other  discreet  Bishops  and 
Divines"  were  set  to  work,  by  order  of  the  king, 
to  prepare  a  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  this 
book,  having  been  debated  and  adopted  in  the 
Church  Convocation  and  afterwards  in  Parliament 
after  long  discussion,  was  set  forth  and  established 
for  common  use  on  January  21,  1549. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  book — known 
as  the  First  Prayer  Book  of  Edward  VI. — repre- 
sented and  expressed  the  convictions  of  the  vast 
majority  of  clergy  and  people  of  the  Church  of 
England.  But  it  was  too  conservative  for  the  ex- 
treme reformers,  who  had  meantime  been  rein- 
forced by  immigrants  from  the  Protestant  sections 
of  Continental  Europe,  and  so  in  1552  a  revised 
Prayer  Book  was  set  forth  by  authority,  which 
included  the  Ordinal,  that  is,  the  ''form  and  man- 
ner of  making  and  consecrating  Archbishops, 
Bishops,  Priests,  and  Deacons,"  which  had  existed 
before,  but  was  made  part  of  the  Prayer  Book  at 
this  time.  This  second  Prayer  Book  of  Edward 
VI.  changed  the  sentence  to  be  used  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  Communion  from  "The  Body  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  which  was  given  for  thee 
preserve  thy  body  and  soul  unto  everlasting  life," 
to  "Take  and  eat  this  in  remembrance  that  Christ 


46  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

died  for  thee  and  feed  on  Him  in  thy  heart  by 
faith  with  thanksgiving" ;  and  also  inserted  the 
Black  Rubric,  as  it  was  called,  which  explained 
that  the  kneeling  posture  at  the  Communion  did 
not  imply  worship  of  the  physical  elements.  The 
worst  defect  of  this  second  Prayer  Book  was  the 
omission  of  the  Office  for  the  Anointing  of  the 
Sick,  which  was  part  of  the  First  Prayer  Book 
and  was  a  legitimate  return  to  the  practice  of  the 
early  Church,  as  contrasted  with  the  custom  of 
Extreme  Unction,  which  was  not  for  the  purpose 
of  restoring  men  to  health,  but  of  preparing  them 
for  death.  I  cannot  but  believe  that  we  would 
have  been  saved  from  some  modern  follies  of  faith- 
healing  if  this  old  office  had  been  retained  in  our 
Prayer  Book. 

Queen  Mary  succeeded  Edward  VI.  and  for  five 
years  the  Prayer  Book  was  proscribed  and  every 
effort  was  made  to  stamp  out  the  reform  movement. 
But  the  flames  of  the  three  hundred  fires  that 
burned  Englishmen  for  their  faith  only  served  to 
refine  and  purify  English  Churchmanship  and 
clear  men's  minds  as  to  the  essential  and  everlast- 
ing issues. 

When  Elizabeth  succeeded  Mary  in  the  autumn 
of  1558,  the  Prayer  Book  and  the  Reformation 
were  at  once  restored,  and  of  9,400  clergymen  in 
England  only  about  189  refused  to  conform.     The 


THE  BOOK  OF  COjMMON  PRAYER  47 

methods  of  Cardinal  Pole  and  Queen  Mary  had 
cured  the  English  people  forever  of  any  love  for 
the  Italian  ecclesiastical  dominion. 

The  Prayer  Book  set  forth  under  Elizabeth 
was  substantially  the  second  Book  of  Edward  VI. 
with  the  omission  of  the  Black  Rubric  and  the 
addition  of  the  form  of  administration  in  the  first 
Book,  giving  us  the  double  sentence  which  we  use 
to-day.  And  this  Book  was  the  common  devo- 
tional handbook  of  Englishmen  during  that  long 
reign  of  forty-five  years. 

Unfortunately  two  classes  of  obstructionists 
had  arisen.  First,  the  Puritans,  and  second,  the 
Sectarians  or  Dissenters.  The  first  dissenters 
were  the  Roman  Catholics,  who  had  used  the 
Prayer  Book  and  enjoyed  it  with  all  its  offices 
for  baptism,  burial,  and  Holy  Communion  for 
eleven  years,  but  were  forced  by  the  Pope's  excom- 
munication of  Elizabeth  (A.  D.  1569)  to  form 
themselves  into  a  separate  sect.  Then  some  of  the 
Puritans  organized  under  a  Presbyterian  polity, 
and  the  Independents  or  Congregationalists  fol- 
lowed their  example.  The  great  majority  of  the 
Puritans  remained  in  the  Church,  conforming 
with  more  or  less  fidelity  to  the  order  of  service, 
but  desiring  what  we  would  call  a  "converted 
membership"  and  a  nearer  approach  to  the  Cal- 
vinistic  conception  of  religion.     It  was  in  defer- 


48  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

ence  to  the  Puritan  demands  for  change  that  King 
James  I.  held  a  conference  with  men  of  all  parties 
at  Hampton  Court,  1604;  but  the  discussion  for 
the  most  part  was  on  technical  and  trivial  issues 
and  the  Prayer  Book  was  unchanged,  except  by 
the  addition  of  the  questions  on  the  Sacraments 
in  the  Catechism.  One  great  result  of  the  confer- 
ence, however,  was  that  an  order  was  issued  by 
the  King  for  the  translation  of  the  Bible  from  the 
original  tongues,  and  this  gave  us  the  version 
of  1611. 

King  James  died  in  1625  and  was  succeeded 
by  his  son  Charles  I.  during  whose  troublous  reign 
the  Puritans  and  Presbyterians  succeeded  in  over- 
throwing the  Church  of  England.  Archbishop 
Laud  and  King  Charles  were  both  beheaded,  and 
on  January  3,  1645,  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
was  proscribed  by  Act  of  Parliament,  all  copies 
of  it  were  ordered  to  be  burnt,  and  the  use  of  it, 
in  public  or  in  private,  in  the  Church  or  at  family 
prayers,  was  punished  by  fine  and  imprisonment. 
A  so-called  directory  was  substituted  for  it,  in 
which,  among  other  things,  it  was  ordered  that 
when  persons  died  their  bodies  should  be  buried 
without  any  ceremony  whatever,  without  either 
prayer  or  music. 

For  sixteen  years  this  gloomy  and  terrible  re- 
ligion prevailed,  and  the  clergy  and  laity,  who  had 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER  49 

learned  to  love  the  Prayer  Book  and  its  services, 
were  hunted  and  persecuted.  How  they  learned 
the  Book  by  heart  and  kept  np  the  prayers  is  de- 
lightfully told  by  Isaak  Walton  in  his  life  of 
Bishop  Sanderson. 

Charles  II.  came  to  the  throne  in  1660,  and 
immediately  the  Prayer  Book  was  restored  to  use. 
The  next  year,  at  the  Savoy  Conference,  the  Puri- 
tans and  the  leaders  of  the  Church  had  their  final 
discussion  as  to  the  changes  in  the  Prayer  Book 
that  were  deemed  absolutely  necessary  by  the  non- 
conformists ;  but  it  was  found  that  the  system  of  the 
Church  and  that  of  the  Puritans  were  so  irrecon- 
cilable that  one  communion  could  not  hold  them 
both.  A  thorough  review  of  the  Prayer  Book  was 
made  at  this  time ;  it  was  carefully  edited ;  in  the 
prayer  for  the  Church  in  the  Communion  Office, 
as  Dr.  Hart  says,  an  explicit  oblation  and  a  com- 
memoration of  the  departed  were  inserted;  the 
Black  Rubric  was  restored  with  an  important 
change  in  its  phraseology — ^^corporal"  being  sub- 
stituted for  "real  and  essential"  in  the  description 
of  the  Presence — a  few  concessions  to  the  Puritans, 
such  as  giving  the  Epistles  and  Gospels  in  the  last 
translation,  were  made.  The  other  changes  were 
merely  editorial,  and  the  Prayer  Book  of  1662 
has  been  the  standard  for  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years. 


50  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

111  order  to  understand  the  situation  more 
clearly  I  shall  mention  a  few  of  the  other  changes 
desired  bv  the  Puritans.  They  made  three  pre- 
liminary declarations,  viz:' 

(1)  They  agreed  to  the  Episcopal  government 
of  the  Church,  provided  it  was  not  too  autocratic ; 

(2)  They  strongly  asserted  the  necessity  of  a 
written  Liturgy  for  public  worship ; 

(3)  They  objected  to  all  ceremonies  because 
they  were  not  acceptable  to  the  Continental  Protes- 
tants. 

As  to  the  Prayer  Book  they  objected : 

(1)  To  the  whole  practice  of  responsive  wor- 
ship, whether  in  prayers  or  chants  or  litanies,  and 
to  the  recitation  of  the  Confession  by  the  people 
or  any  other  prayer.  They  held  that  one  long 
prayer  by  the  minister  w^as  more  edifying,  and 
that  ^^amen"  said  by  the  people  was  enough — the 
minister  being  their  spokesman  or  mouth-piece. 
They  opposed  the  idea  of  a  Common  Prayer  in 
which  the  laity  took  part.  They  objected  to  the 
delivery  of  the  elements  to  the  people  one  by  one. 

(2)  They  objected  to  the  sign  of  the  cross,  the 
use  of  the  ring  and  the  surplice,  and  all  such  ritual 
accessories. 

(3)  They    objected    to    the   liberality   of   the 


See  Cardwoll's  Conferences,  pp.  303-335. 


THE  BOOK  OF  CO.ABION  PRAYER  51 

Prayer  Book  in  praying  for  ''all  who  travel" ;  in 
saying  that  all  baptized  infants  dying  before  Con- 
firmation and  Communion  are  undoubtedly  saved ; 
calling  all  baptized  children  ^'regenerate" ;  to  the 
generalities  of  the  Confession  which  ought  to  go 
more  into  particulars ;  to  the  prayer  in  the  Burial 
Office  that  "when  we  depart  this  life,  we  may  rest 
in  Him,  as  our  hope  is  this  our  brother  doth" ; 
and  to  the  use  of  the  word  "Sunday"  instead  of 
Lord's  Day. 

(4)  They  objected  to  Sponsors  in  Baptism  on 
the  ground  that  any  profession  of  faith  on  the  part 
of  the  child,  even  through  its  parents  or  guardians, 
might  encourage  the  heresy  of  the  Anabaptists,  who 
insisted  on  faith  before  Baptism. 

The  replies  of  the  Bishops  to  these  objections 
were  at  considerable  length,  and  the  substance  was : 

(1)  We  do  not  propose  to  surrender  our  whole 
liturgical  inheritance  from  the  Catholic  Church 
of  history,  nor  the  immemorial  traditions  of  Cath- 
olic usage,  in  order  to  please  the  new,  individual 
tastes  and  preferences  of  a  certain  extreme  party 
of  people  in  this  age. 

(2)  If  any  phrase  or  use  of  custom  authorized 
in  the  Prayer  Book  can  be  shown  to  be  contrary 
to  Holy  Scripture  or  the  teaching  of  the  primitive 
Church,  we  shall  gladly  change  it,  but  not  other- 
wise. 


52  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

The  first  use  of  the  Prayer  Book  within  the 
present  limits  of  the  United  States  appears  to  have 
been  in  1579,  when  the  chaplain  of  Sir  Francis 
Drake  read  prayers  at  the  time  of  a  landing  on  the 
Pacific  Coast  near  San  Francisco,  and  a  Prayer 
Book  Cross  has  been  erected  to  mark  the  spot.  The 
first  permanent  settlement  of  English  Churchmen 
w^as  at  Jamestown,  Virginia,  in  1607,  thirteen 
years  before  the  Puritans  landed  on  Plymouth 
Pock.  The  services  of  the  Prayer  Book  were 
regularly  used  at  Jamestown  at  the  beginning,  and 
have  been  continuous  ever  since,  although  for  177 
years  the  colonists  had  no  Bishops  to  minister  to 
them,  and  the  offices  for  ordination  and  confirma- 
tion were  practically  unknown.  It  is  amazing, 
w^hen  we  think  of  it,  that  such  a  maimed  and  head- 
less Church  could  ever  have  survived,  and  yet  it 
was  the  Prayer  Book — the  sane  and  noble  and 
lofty  spiritual  idealism  of  the  Prayer  Book — 
which  held  the  allegiance  and  moulded  the  char- 
acter of  the  majority  of  those  great  Americans 
who  accomplished  the  Revolution  and  founded 
the  Republic.  Two-thirds  of  the  signers  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  and  quite  two-thirds 
of  the  men  who  adopted  the  Constitution,  had  been 
brought  up  in  the  use  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer. 

As  soon  as  the  Revolution  had  been  accom- 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMAION  PRAYER       53 

plished  Churchmen  met  together  for  complete  or- 
ganization.    The    people    of    Connecticut    elected 
Samuel  Seabury  Bishop  and  sent  him  across  the 
sea  to  be  consecrated ;  and  he,  finding  that  the  legal 
changes  necessary  to  his  consecration  in  England, 
had  not  yet  been  made,  went  to  Scotland  and  re- 
ceived his   Episcopal   authority  from  the   Scotch 
Bishops.     Meanwhile  there  had  been  meetings  in 
various    places;    and    a    Convention    from    seven 
States,    held    in    Philadelphia,    had    appointed    a 
Committee  on  the  Prayer  Book,  which,  of  course, 
had  to  be  adapted  to  the  new  political  conditions. 
This  committee  prepared  and  reported  a  Revised 
Prayer  Book,  which  was  so  radical  in  its  conces- 
sions to  extreme  Protestantism  and  to  infidelity, 
that   it   was   generally   obnoxious   to    Churchmen 
everywhere,  and  was  virtually  igTiored  in  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  first  General  Convention  of  the 
whole  Church,  which  met  in  Philadelphia  in  the 
fall  of   1789.     The  American  Prayer  Book  was 
adopted  at  that  Convention,   and  it  contained  a 
very  dignified  and  thoughtful  Preface,  in  which 
the  general  reasons,  political  and  other,  are  given 
for  the  changes  that  seemed  expedient,   and  the 
principle   is   stated  that   in   these  changes,    ^^this 
Church  is  far  from  intending  to  depart  from  the 
Church  of  England  in  any  essential  point  of  doc- 
trine, discipline,  or  worship :  or  further  than  local 


54  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

circumstances  require."  Some  concessions  were 
made  in  the  American  Book  to  local  conditions  and 
prejudices,  which  may  seem  to  us  to  have  been 
unnecessary,  as  for  example,  the  permission  to  omit 
the  sign  of  the  cross  in  Baptism,  but  they  did  no 
harm.  Every  man,  who  knows  the  history  of  it, 
is  glad  that  the  Athanasian  Creed  (so-called)  was 
omitted,  and  the  Black  Rubric  with  it.  In  recent 
years  we  have  restored  the  Magnificat  and  the  lon- 
ger Benedidus,  and  have  made  ample  provision 
for  shortened  services.  But  incomparably  the 
greatest  gain  of  the  American  Revision — which 
reduces  all  other  changes  to  insignificance — was 
the  adoption,  with  a  single  modification,  of  the 
Scotch  form  of  the  Prayer  of  Consecration,  with 
an  explicit  Oblation  and  an  explicit  Invocation  of 
the  Holy  Spirit — which  allies  us  wdth  the  Greek 
Church  and  conforms  to  the  most  ancient  liturgies 
of  Christendom. 

I  venture  to  give,  in  conclusion,  two  quotations 
from  writers  on  the  Prayer  Book,  which  seem  to 
be  of  exceptional  interest  and  value.  The  first 
is  from  the  late  Professor  Shields  of  Princeton 
University,  professor  in  the  Presbyterian  Theo- 
logical Seminary.     He  says: 

'The  English  Liturgy,  next  to  the  English 
Bible,  is  the  most  wonderful  product  of  the 
Reformation.     The  very  fortunes  of  the  book 


THE  BOOK  OF  C0M3^I0N  PRAYER       55 

are  the  romance  of  history.  As  we  trace  its 
development,  its  rubrics  seem  djed  in  the  blood 
of  martyrs ;  its  offices  echo  with  polemic  phrases ; 
its  canticles  mingle  with  the  battle-cries  of 
armed  sects  and  factions;  and  its  successive  re- 
visions mark  the  career  of  dynasties,  states,  and 
churches.  Cavalier,  Covenanter,  and  Puritan 
have  crossed  their  swords  over  it;  scholars  and 
soldiers,  statesmen  and  Churchmen,  Kings  and 
Commoners,  have  united  in  defending  it.  Eng- 
land, Germany,  Geneva,  Scotland,  and  America 
have  by  turns  been  the  scene  of  its  conflicts. 
Far  beyond  the  little  island  which  was  its  birth- 
place, its  influence  has  been  silently  spreading 
in  connection  with  great  political  and  religious 
changes,  generation  after  generation,  from  land 
to  land,  even  where  its  name  was  never  heard. 
...  It  would  be  strange  if  a  work  which  thus 
has  its  roots  in  the  past,  should  not  be  sending 
forth  its  branches  into  the  whole  Church  of  the 
future;  and  anyone  who  will  take  the  pains  to 
study  its  present  adaptations,  whatever  may 
have  been  his  prejudices,  must  admit  that  there 
is  no  other  extant  formulary  which  is  so  well 
fitted  to  become  the  rallying-point  and  standard 
of  modern  Christendom.  In  it  are  to  be  found 
the  means — possibly  the  germs — of  a  just  reor- 
ganization of  Protestantism,  as  well  as  an  ulti- 


56  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUKCH 

mate  reconciliation  with  true  Catholicism — 
such  a  Catholicism  as  shall  have  shed  everything 
sectarian  and  national,  and  retained  only  what 
is  common  to  the  whole  Church  of  Christ  in  all 
ages  and  countries.  Whilst  to  the  true  Protes- 
tant it  offers  Evangelical  doctrine,  worship,  and 
unity,  on  the  terms  of  the  Reformation,  it  still 
preserves  for  the  true  Catholic,  the  choicest  for- 
mulas of  antiquity,  and  to  all  Christians  of  every 
name  opens  a  liturgical  system  at  once  scriptural 
and  reasonable,  doctrinal  and  devotional,  learned 
and  vernacular,  artistic  and  spiritual.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say,  that  were  the  problem 
given,  to  frame  out  of  the  imperfectly  organ- 
ized and  sectarian  Christianity  of  our  times  a 
liturgical  model  for  the  Communion  of  Saints 
in  the  one  universal  Church,  the  result  might 
be  expressed  in  some  such  compilation  as  the 
English  Book  of  Common  Prayer." 
The  second  quotation  is  from  Edmund  Clar- 
ence Stedman's  Nature  of  Poetry,  pp.  281-283. 
He  says : 

^^Upon  its  literary  and  constructive  side,  I 
regard  the  venerable  Liturgy  of  the  Historic 
Christian  Church  as  one  of  the  few  World- 
Poems — Poems  Universal.  I  care  not  which 
of  its  rituals  you  follow,  the  Oriental,  the  Alex- 
andrian, the  Latin,  or  the  Anglican.     The  lat- 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER  57 

ter,  that  of  the  Episcopal  Prayer  Book,  is  a 
version  familiar  to  you  of  what  seems  to  me  the 
most  wonderful  symphonic  idealization  of 
human  faith — certainly  the  most  inclusive — 
blending  in  harmonic  succession  all  the  cries 
and  longings  of  the  universal  human  heart  in- 
voking a  paternal  Creator.  ...  I  have  in  mind 
its  human  quality;  the  mystic  tide  of  human 
hope,  imagination,  prayer,  sorrows,  and  pas- 
sionate expression,  upon  which  it  bears  the  wor- 
shipper along,  and  wherewith  it  has  sustained 
men's  souls  with  conceptions  of  Deity  and  im- 
mortality through  hundreds,  yes  thousands,  of 
undoubting  years.  ...  It  has  been  a  growth, 
an  exhalation,  an  apocalyptic  cloud  arisen,  with 
the  prayer  of  the  Saints,  from  the  climes  of  the 
Hebrew,  the  Greek,  the  Roman,  the  Goth,  to 
spread  in  time  over  half  the  world.  It  is  the 
voice  of  human  brotherhood,  the  blended  voice 
of  rich  and  poor,  old  and  young,  the  wise  and 
the  simple,  the  statesman  and  the  clo^\Ta;  the 
brotherhood  of  an  age,  which  knowing  little, 
comprehended  little,  and  could  have  no  refuge 
save  trust  in  the  oracles,  through  which  a  just 
and  merciful  Protector,  a  Pervading  Spirit,  a 
Living  Mediator  and  Consoler,  had  been  re- 
vealed. ...  Its  prayers  are  not  only  for  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  but  for  every  stress 


58  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

of  life  in  which  mankind  must  feel  in  common 
— in  the  household  or  isolated,  or  in  tribal  or 
national  effort,  and  in  calamity  and  repentance 
and  thanksgiving.  Its  wisdom  is  forever  old 
and  perpetually  new;  its  calendar  celebrates  all 
seasons  of  the  rolling  year;  its  narrative  is  of 
the  simplest,  the  most  pathetic,  the  most  rap- 
turous and  ennobling  life,  the  world  has  ever 
known.  There  is  no  malefactor  so  wretched, 
no  just  man  so  perfect,  as  not  to  find  his  hope, 
his  consolation,  his  lesson,  in  this  poem  of 
poems.  I  have  called  it  lyrical ;  it  is  dramatic 
in  structure  and  effect ;  it  is  an  epic  of  the  age 
of  faith ;  but  in  fact  as  a  piece  of  inclusive  lit- 
erature, it  has  no  counterpart  and  can  have  no 


1 

i 

THE  PRAYER  BOOK 

AS  A  PRODUCT  OF  THE  REFORMATION 

HAVE  shown  in  the  previous  lecture, 
that  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  Avas 
a  product  of  the  Keformation  move- 
ment, and  that  this  movement  in  Eng- 
land extended  over  a  long  period  of  one  hundred 
and  twenty-seven  years — from  the  abolition  of  the 
Papal  Supremacy  in  1534  to  the  Savoy  Conference 
in  1661. 

In  this  present  lecture  I  shall  try  to  show  what 
the  Eeformation  movement  was,  what  caused  it, 
and  how  in  the  largest  perspective  it  ought  to  be 
judged.  As  the  whole  organization  of  human 
society  was  affected,  and  the  civilized  human  race 
itself  changed  its  point  of  view,  during  those  years 
of  controversy  and  tumult,  we  must  be  prepared 
to  find  the  subject  complicated  and  difficult  to 
analyze. 

However,  by  studying  the  Keformation  under 
three  aspects — Political,  Intellectual,  and  Eeli- 
gious — we  may  reach  a  more  comprehensive  and 
a  wiser  and  fairer  understanding  of  it. 

I.    Politically,  the  Keformation  may  be  said  to 


GO  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

liave  been  the  revolt  of  the  National  spirit  against 
the  progranuiie  of  Universal  Empire,  which 
CharlemagTie  and  Pope  Leo  had  launched  in  the 
year  800.  For  six  hundred  and  fifty  years  the 
people  of  Europe  had  been  treated  as  pa^^als  in  the 
great  game  which  the  German  Emperor  played 
with  the  Koman  Popes,  each  claiming  superiority. 
The  Pope  conceived  of  himself  as  the  only  Yicar  of 
Christ  on  earth  and  of  all  other  earthly  sovereigns 
as  related  to  himself,  as  the  moon  to  the  sun,  shin- 
ing by  reflected  light.  The  Emperor  was  supposed 
to  be  an  advocate  or  defender  of  the  Papacy,  whose 
duty  it  was  to  keep  peace,  to  hold  the  clergy  and 
people  in  obedience,  and  to  punish  heretics  and 
schismatics.  The  Emperor's  power,  analogous  to 
that  of  the  Pope's,  was  universal,  and  his  quasi- 
ecclesiastical  character  entitled  him  to  be  arrayed 
on  occasion  in  ecclesiastical  vestments;  for  as 
Brj'ce  says,  ^'The  Holy  Roman  Church  and  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire  were  one  and  the  same  thing, 
in  two  aspects."  '  For  about  two  hundred  years 
the  Crusades  furnished  at  least  the  appearance  of 
a  common  work,  w^hich  checked  the  growth  of  the 
national  consciousness,  but  little  by  little  different 
languages,  different  temperaments,  different  geo- 
graphical boundaries,  asserted  themselves  and  the 


^  Holy  Roman  Empire,  p.  201. 


THE  PEAYER  BOOK  61 

various  groups  became  specialized  with  peculiar 
habits  and  institutions.  By  the  end  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  these  nationalities  had  grown, 
through  war  and  commerce,  into  strong  monarchi- 
cal governments,  which  refused  even  a  nominal 
recognition  of  the  Holy  Eoman  Empire.  Spain 
was  united  under  Ferdinand  and  Isabella.  In 
France  the  concentration  of  all  power  in  the  king, 
the  creation  of  a  compact  and  solid  kingdom  out 
of  a  number  of  rival  and  hostile  provinces,  signi- 
fied not  only  territorial  union,  but  administrative 
autocracy,  and  indicated  that  France  had  come  to 
manhood  under  Francis  I.  Just  at  the  same  time 
England  emerged  from  the  terrible  wars  of  the 
barons,  w^hich  left  the  power  of  the  nobility  weak- 
ened and  its  numbers  greatly  diminished ;  the  Com- 
mons wearied  with  the  long  struggle;  and  ^^the 
great  monarchical  administrative  unity  towering 
high  over  the  prostrate  estates,"  embodied  in  two 
kings — one  Henry  VI I.  ^Svho  was  a  tyrant  in  self- 
defense,"  and  the  other,  his  son,  Henry  VIII. 
"who  was  a  tyrant  from  sheer  self-will."  In  Ger- 
many, Maximilian  had  concentrated  in  his  own 
hands  the  territorial  possessions  of  the  Hapsburgs 
and  had  united  iVustria  and  her  outlying  states. 
All  over  the  world  the  national  spirit  was  awake 
and  was  ready  to  rebel  against  the  old  Imperial 
Order  with  which  the  Church  was  identified. 


62  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

II.  When  wc  come  to  the  Intellectual  vicAV- 
point,  we  note  that  the  scholastic  philosophy,  which 
represented  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  reached  its  climax  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
and  the  characteristic  of  scholasticism  was  that  it 
undertook  to  settle  all  questions  in  heaven  and 
earth,  and  settled  them  dogmatically  without  ap- 
peal. All  possible  religious  questions  were  solved 
by  reference  to  the  Church's  decisions,  and  ques- 
tions which  fell  altogether  outside  of  ecclesiastical 
limits — questions  for  example  of  observation  and 
physical  science — were  decided  by  an  appeal  to 
Aristotle,  who  was  called  "the  Philosopher"  par 
excellence,  or  were  determined  a  priori.  The  in- 
ductive method,  by  which  judgments  are  derived 
from  ascertained  facts,  was  practically  unknown. 
Against  this  kind  of  dogmatism  the  human  mind 
was  asserting  in  every  direction  its  impatience  and 
intolerance. 

The  artistic  and  literary  revival  began  with 
the  canvas  and  fresco  painting  of  Cimabue  and 
Giotto,  and  the  writings  of  Dante,  Petrarch,  and 
Boccaccio  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  cen- 
turies. In  all  this  movement  there  was  a  mani- 
fest desire  to  go  back  to  old  classic  models.  Pope 
Julius  II.  tore  down  the  venerable  Basilica  of  St. 
Peter  in  order  to  rebuild  it  in  the  style  of  a  classi- 
cal heathen  temple.     Men  were  intoxicated  with 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  63 

the  new  learning,  i.e._,  with  the  study  of  Latin  and 
Greek,  and  the  art  and  literature  of  the  Greeks, 
and  this  received  a  tremendous  impetus  by  the  fall 
of  Constantinople  in  1453,  when  so  many  Greek 
scholars  came  into  the  West  for  residence.  And 
in  this  classical  revival — this  Renaissance  as  it  is 
called — its  devotees  swallowed  the  ancient  litera- 
ture, dregs  and  all,  and  became  paganized.  Of 
Pope  Leo  X.  who  succeeded  Julius  and  was  a 
friend  of  Ariosto,  of  Machiavelli,  of  Raphael — 
Sarpi,  in  his  History  of  the  Council  of  Trent,  says : 
"He  would  have  been  a  Pope  absolutely  complete 
if,  with  his  love  of  music  and  his  gentle  kindness, 
he  had  joined  some  knowledge  in  things  concern- 
ing religion."  And  this  was  the  Pope  who  ex- 
communicated Martin  Luther  and  set  the  fire  of 
the  Reformation  ablaze.  Blatant  skepticism  and 
gross  immoralit}^  characterized  the  Pagan  Renais- 
sance in  Italy:  but  that  same  intellectual  awaken- 
ing among  the  Teutonic  races — in  Germany  and 
England — drove  scholars  to  the  study  of  the  Xew 
Testament  in  the  original  and  to  fierce  rejection 
of  teachings  that  were  inconsistent  with  it.  It  is 
easy  to  see  how  such  a  movement,  once  started, 
could  lead  to  crass  individualism  exploiting  a  thou- 
sand vagaries  and  rebelling  against  all  authority. 
At  the  same  time  let  us  remember,  as  Aubrey 
Moore  said,  "Real  liberty  may  always  become  li- 


04  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

cense,  but  that  is  not  an  argument  in  favor  of 
bondage."  " 

It  is  profoundly  true,  that  the  Reformation 
was  the  revelation  of  a  new  branch  of  the  human 
race  to  the  world.  The  Teutonic  peoples  had  been 
brought  under  a  Roman  civilization  as  early  as  the 
fourth  century,  and  they  had  been  steadily  grow- 
ing in  weight  and  importance;  but  they  had  not 
occupied  a  position  of  supremacy  like  that  of  Italy 
or  France  or  Spain.  In  God's  Providence  they 
made  the  intellectual  awakening  of  the  sixteenth 
century  religious,  and  by  sound  learning  and  a 
certain  native  reverence  and  serious-mindedness, 
saved  the  moral  ideals  of  Christendom  and  gave 
the  movement  of  mere  intellectual  revolt  a  positive 
spiritual  value.  From  the  sixteenth  century  the 
Teutonic  peoples  begin  to  take  the  leading  place 
in  the  world's  progress  and  the  centre  of  gravity 
of  European  politics  is  transferred  forever  to  the 
north  of  the  Alps."" 

III.  From  the  aspect  of  Religion  and  Morals, 
the  Reformation  was  a  revolt  of  faith  and  con- 
science and  reason  against  unreality:  against  the 
substitution  of  the  trappings  of  religion  for  re- 
ligion itself.  Every  religion  sooner  or  later  tends 
to  fixity  and  rigidity  of  form,  and  there  is  always 


-  Lectures  on  the  Reformation. 
^  See  Collins,  The  Reformation. 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  65 

danger  of  treating  the  form  as  though  it  were  the 
religion — that  was  the  condition  of  Jewish  religion 
in  the  time  of  Christ.  Deep  feelings  express  them- 
selves in  acts ;  then  the  acts  rightly  become  sacred ; 
and  then  perhaps  the  good  act  degenerates  into 
mere  mechanical  routine.  What  roused  the  Re- 
formers was  St.  Paul's  clarion  appeal  in  the  Epis- 
tle to  the  Galatians  for  the  recognition  of  the  su- 
preme importance  of  the  individual  human  soul, 
and  its  sacred  right  of  direct  communion  with  God. 

Whatever  mistakes  he  made,  and  like  all  dar- 
ing human  spirits  he  did  make  some  tremendous 
mistakes,  Martin  Luther  was  a  man  of  great 
genius,  of  lofty  purpose  and  passionate  earnest- 
ness ;  and  when  he  went  to  Rome  to  visit  the  Holy 
City  of  his  Faith,  the  spectacle  of  the  pomp  of 
formal  and  frequent  religious  observances,  con- 
ducted by  men  whose  daily  lives  were  a  by-word 
and  a  hissing  for  their  iniquities,  stunned  and 
appalled  him;  and  what  was  true  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance  was  true  to  a  degree 
elsewhere. 

The  fact  was  that  the  organization  of  the  Me- 
diaeval Church  had  become  unwieldy.  Institu- 
tions, once  useful,  had  outlived  their  usefulness. 
Monasticism  fostered  an  idle  and  lazy  class  of  men. 
There  were  too  many  clergy,  and  many  of  them 
led  uuAvorthy  lives.     Ecclesiastical  discipline,   as 


00  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

Creightoii  says,  from  the  Court  of  lloine  down  to 
every  diocesan  court,  was  a  vexatious  means  of 
exacting  money;  and  justice  was  too  often  a  mat- 
ter of  bargain  and  sale.  And  while  this  seems 
terrible  to  us,  let  it  be  understood  that  it  is  only 
part  of  the  story — one  side  of  the  picture,  though 
a  very  conspicuous  side.  There  were  many 
thousands  of  men  and  women  in  the  Church — even 
in  the  Italian  section  of  the  Church — whose  spir- 
itual life  and  enthusiasm  were  as  high  and  beauti- 
ful as  any  age  could  boast  of,  and  who  found  in 
these  very  forms  and  ceremonies  the  reality  of  the 
Presence  and  Power  of  the  Living  Christ.  ^'The 
Oratory  of  Divine  Love,"  to  cite  only  one  in- 
stance, produced  characters  and  taught  doctrines 
as  pure  and  as  evangelical  as  were  ever  produced 
in  the  world.  It  was  the  influence  of  spirits  like 
these  in  the  previous  century  which  had  created 
the  reform  movement,  sixty  years  before  Luther 
was  born,  and  had  groaned  over  the  failure  of 
council  after  council  to  accomplish  anything,  be- 
cause the  ecclesiastical  politicians  were  always  in 
control. 

Certainly  the  fair-minded  student  of  history 
must  admit,  that  the  Roman  Hierarchy  had  re- 
ceived notice  one  hundred  years  before  the  break 
came,  and  it  was  at  last  their  persistent  and  in- 
vincible blindness  and  bigotry  that  drove  many  of 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  67 

the  Church's  noblest  and  most  loyal  children  into 
a  revolt,  which  they  deeply  deplored.  It  wast 
simply  a  case  of  driving  and  forcing  men's  souls, 
and  he  who  tries  to  force  the  souls  of  men,  ^^tilts 
with  a  straw  against  a  champion  cased  in  ada- 
mant." 

THE  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND  IN  THESE 
THREE  ASPECTS 

When  we  come  to  study  the  Reformation  in 
England  as  a  Political,  Intellectual,  and  Religious 
Movement,  we  are  able  at  once  to  account  for  its 
peculiarities — peculiarities  that  differentiate  it 
from  the  movement  on  the  Continent  and  give  to 
the  English  Church,  the  Ecclesia  Anglicana,  a 
mediating  position  in  Christendom.  As  Dr. 
Beard,  the  learned  Unitarian  Hibbert  lecturer, 
says:  "When  a  laborious  German  compiler  enu- 
merates the  English  among  the  Reformed 
Churches,  which  own  a  Genevan  origin,  ...  an 
Anglican  Churchman  can  only  be  amused.  And 
in  truth  such  a  procedure  is  conspicuously  unfaith- 
ful to  historical  fact.  Lutheran,  Calvinistic,  per- 
haps even  Zwinglian  lines  of  influence  upon  the 
English  Reformation  may  be  traced  without  diffi- 
culty; but  there  was  a  native  element,  stronger 
than  any  of  them,  which  at  once  assimilated  them 
and  gave  its  own  character  to  the  result."  * 


Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  301. 


68  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUKCH 

(1)  First,  then,  considered  as  a  Political 
Movement,  the  Eeformation  appealed  to  the  mind 
and  heart  of  a  very  powerful  king,  who  had  al- 
ready dreamed  of  supplanting  the  so-called  Roman 
Emperor  and  of  assuming  the  imperial  title  him- 
self. Professor  Freeman,  in  the  article  on  Eng- 
land in  the  ninth  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Brit- 
annica,  stresses  this  fact  as  necessary  to  the  under- 
standing of  Henry's  attitude.  Moreover,  during 
the  years  of  Henry  VII's  reign  England  had  grown 
tremendously  in  power  and  wealth,  and  her  pros- 
perous middle  class  of  merchant  people  wanted 
freedom  from  any  foreign  dominion.  When 
therefore  the  king,  whose  popularity  with  all 
classes  was  enormous,  who  was  extolled  by  for- 
eigners like  Erasmus  for  his  learning  and  culture, 
and  by  his  subjects  for  his  lavish  generosity  and 
robust  manliness ;  when  this  King  Henry  declared 
that  the  foreign  Pope  had  violated  the  law  in  per- 
mitting him  to  marry  his  brother's  widow;  when 
it  was  whispered  that  she  could  never  bear  a  son 
to  succeed  the  king,  and  that  this  might  lead  to 
more  confusion  and  possible  warfare,  his  subjects 
sympathized  with  his  purpose  to  have  the  marriage 
with  Katharine  annulled.  Moreover,  every  mod- 
ern writer  admits  that  the  Pope's  policy  as  to  this 
annulment  was  not  straightforward.  The  facts 
seem  to  justify  the  conclusion  that  if  Katharine 


THE  PEAYER  BOOK  60 

had  not  been  the  aunt  of  Charles  V.  Emperor  of 
Germany,  who  had  the  Pope  in  his  power,  the 
annuhnent  of  the  marriage  would  have  been 
granted  easily  ^^for  a  consideration."  When  at 
last  Henry,  in  1534  vaulted,  as  it  were,  into  the 
Reformation  Movement,  he  immediately  asserted 
aggressively  his  royal  prerogative,  and  demanded 
that  he  be  recognized  as  Head  of  the  Church  and 
be  paid  a  fine  from  the  clergy  of  two  million 
pounds,  or  ten  million  dollars.  The  terrified 
clergy  paid  the  fine  and  they  also  acknowledged  the 
title,  with  the  proviso  ^^as  far  as  the  law  of  Christ 
will  allow.''  Technically,  King  Henry  had  all  the 
law  and  precedent  on  his  side.  Other  kings  had 
done  the  same  thing.  He  was  in  the  exact  posi- 
tion that  Philip  IV.  of  France  had  been.  You 
will  all  recall  the  words,  which  Shakespeare  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  King  John — just  three  hundred 
years  before  Henry's  time: 

"Tell  the  Pope  this  tale;  and  from  the  mouth  of  England 
Add  thus  much  more,  that  no  Italian  Priest 
Shall  tithe  or  toll  in  our  Dominions; 
But  as  we,  under  Heaven  are  Supreme  Head, 
So  under  Him  that  great  Supremacy, 
Where  we  do  reign,  we  will  alone  uphold. 
Without  the  assistance  of  a  mortal  hand: 
So  tell  the  Pope,  all  reverence  set  apart 
To  him  and  his  usurped  authority."    (K.  John,  III,  i.) 

Doubtless  Henry  argued  thus  with  himself,  for 

at  heart  he  was  a  loyal  son  of  Rome.     But  he  had 


70  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

poured  oil  on  the  fire  and  the  conflagTation  was 
complete,  and  not  to  be  extinguished,  until  the 
barnacles  of  a  thousand  years'  growth,  and  possi- 
bly something  of  the  ship  itself  had  been  burned 
away.  It  was  the  natural  result  of  historical  cir- 
cumstance and  tradition,  that  the  Reformation  in 
the  English  Church  should  take  on  a  political  com- 
plexion. The  Church  and  State  in  England  had 
been  inextricably  interlaced  and  interrelated  by 
the  groAvth  of  centuries.  It  was  through  the  unity 
of  the  Church,  as  Stubbs  shows  in  his  Constitu- 
tional History,  that  the  people  in  the  separate 
kingdoms  in  England  gradually  waked  up  to  the 
sense  of  a  common  political  destiny;  and  under 
King  Alfred  the  formal  organization  of  the  King- 
dom of  England  really  grew  out  of,  and  was 
created  by,  the  antecedent  unity  of  the  Church. 
The  Bishops  of  the  Church  became  leaders  in 
parliamentary  affairs  and  until  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury there  never  had  been  a  Lay  Lord  Chancellor. 
The  King's  relation  to  the  Church  was  in  his 
Kingdom  something  like  that  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Emperor  and  he  was  accorded  a  quasi-ecclesias- 
tical, a  quasi-spiritual  authority.  He  could  not 
make  a  Bishop,  Priest,  or  Deacon — that  was  a 
spiritual  and  ecclesiastical  function — but  he  could 
grant  or  withhold  the  right  to  officiate.  When  the 
Pope's  supremacy  over  England  was  repudiated, 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  71 

all  jurisdiction  of  State  and  Church  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  King  and  he  assumed  the  title  Su- 
preme Head  of  the  Church ;  and  while  in  his  later 
years  he  took  great  liberties,  yet  he  never  pre- 
sumed to  perform  any  spiritual  function.  He 
had  to  exercise  his  authority  through  Convocation 
and  Parliament.  It  is  evident,  however,  and  for 
the  above  reasons,  that  through  the  whole  process 
of  Reformation  in  England,  for  a  century  and  a 
quarter,  political  considerations  and  political 
changes  had  a  peculiar  and  unparalleled  influence 
upon  the  Church. 

(2)  When  we  consider  the  Reformation  as  an 
Intellectual  Movement  in  England  we  are  at  once 
impressed  by  the  manifestations  of  the  English 
habit  of  mind.  Englishmen,  as  a  class,  have  been 
practical  people  and  not  metaphysicians.  The 
French  philosoj^her  said:  '^I  think,  therefore  I 
am,"  but  a  great  Englishman  said:  ^^I  act,  there- 
fore I  am."  (Westcott.)  That  expresses  the  point. 
There  were  from  the  beginning  of  the  Reforma- 
tion the  three  tendencies — one  towards  extreme 
Continental  Protestantism,  one  towards  extreme 
Papalism,  or  what  we  call  Mediaevalism,  and  then 
there  was  the  conservative  attitude  of  most  influ- 
ential Englishmen,  who  were  not  compromisers 
but  harmonizers.  This  last  class  won  the  day  after 
a  long  struggle  and  the  English  Church  finally 


72  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

emerged  with  a  clearly  defined  policy,  which  may 
be  expressed  in  three  propositions,  viz. : 

1.  The  integrity  and  continuity  of  the 
Church,  with  the  primitive  institution  of  the  sac- 
raments, must  be  maintained  at  all  costs. 

2.  The  Holy  Scriptures  must  be  frankly  ac- 
cepted as  the  sole  basis  of  doctrine  and  Church 
government;  and  whatever  may  be  clearly  shown 
by  sound  learning  to  have  been  the  facts  of  the 
Gospel  and  of  the  foundation  of  the  Church, 
must  be  honestly  admitted  whether  they  seem  to 
fit  in  with  pre-conceived  theories  or  not.  The 
chief  concern  is  not  to  get  a  logical  system  but 
to  get  at  the  truth ;  and  the  Church  is  the  keeper 
and  witness  of  Holy  Scripture  and  not  the  infalli- 
ble interpreter  of  it. 

3.  The  Book  of  Common  Prayer  is  the  prac- 
tical and  concrete  expression  of  this  intellectual 
attitude. 

It  is  interesting  and  instructive  to  note  in  this 
connection,  that,  while  from  time  to  time  Ex- 
planatory Articles  of  Religion  were  set  forth  in 
England,  they  were  never  meant  nor  understood 
to  be  Creedal  statements,  like  the  Apostles  or  'Ni- 
cene  Creeds. 

At  the  very  outset  of  the  Eeform  Movement  it 
was  declared  by  law  (25  Henry  VIII.  c.  21,  A.  D. 
1533),  "That  the  King  and  Parliament  did  not 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  73 

by  it  (L  e.,  by  rejDiidiating  the  Pope's  Supremacy) 
intend  to  decline  or  vary  from  the  congregation 
of  Christ's  Church  in  anything  concerning  the 
very  articles  of  the  Catholic  Faith  of  Christendom, 
and  in  any  other  things  declared  by  Scripture  and 
the  Word  of  God  necessary  for  salvation." 

And  Queen  Elizabeth  took  care  to  write  to 
the  Catholic  princes  of  Europe,  '^^o  new  religion 
has  been  set  up  in  England,  but  that  which  was 
commanded  by  Our  Saviour,  practised  by  the 
primitive  church  and  approved  by  the  fathers  of 
the  best  antiquity."     (See  Benton,  XXIII.) 

The  three  Creeds,  viz. :  The  Creed  called  the 
Apostles  Creed,  the  Creed  called  the  Xicene  Creed, 
and  the  Creed,  or  rather  hymn,  called  the  Athana- 
sian  Creed  (still  recited  on  special  days  in  the 
Church  of  England)  were  regarded  as  sufficient 
statements  of  the  faith.  But  no  less  than  eight 
explanations  or  statements  of  Christian  Doctrine 
were  set  forth  between  the  years  1536  and  1571. 
The  last  of  these  statements,  called  the  XXXIX 
Articles  of  Religion,  has  still  to  be  subscribed  to 
by  the  Clergy  in  the  English  Church,  and  they 
contain  a  very  judicious  and  carefully  worded 
declaration  of  the  position  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land on  the  fundamental  truths  of  religion  and  on 
the  controverted  questions  of  that  time.  They  do 
not  cover  all  points   of   Christian  Doctrine   and 


74  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

thej  claim  to  be  only  "articles  agreed  upon  by  the 
Archbishops,  Bishops,  and  Clergy,  of  the  year 
1562,  for  the  avoiding  of  diversities  of  opinions, 
and  for  the  establishing  of  consent  touching  true 
religion" :  and,  in  order,  as  the  "Declaration" 
says,  that  "the  disputes  may  be  shut  up  in  God's 
promises  as  they  be  generally  set  forth  to  us  in 
the  Holy  Scriptures  and  the  general  meaning  of 
the  Articles  of  the  Church."  The  articles,  al- 
though printed  at  the  end  of  the  American  Prayer 
Book  are  not  really  a  part  of  it,  and  we  use  them 
only  as  a  basis  to  furnish  an  outline  for  the  in- 
struction of  our  students  in  Theology  and  as  an 
interesting  memorial  of  past  controversy. 

4.  The  English  Reformation,  as  a  moral  and 
religious  movement,  which  I  hope  to  discuss  at 
more  length  in  my  last  lecture,  is  well  described 
by  John  Colet,  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral, 
London,  in  a  sermon  which  he  preached  in  1511, 
and  w^hich  has  come  do^vn  to  us  as  good  contem- 
porary evidence. 

The  whole  sermon  is  an  earnest  appeal  for  the 
reform  of  abuses  which  are  destroying  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Church  and  turning  men's  minds  away 
from  religion.  He  speaks  of  worldly  pomp  and 
ambition,  of  feasting  and  babbling  and  carnal  con- 
cupiscence, among  the  clergy,  of  their  gTced  and 
avarice,    and   the   corresponding   effect   upon   the 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  75 

laity.  He  laments  the  existence  of  nepotism  and 
simony  and  non-residence  and  pluralities — ^'boys 
for  old  men,  fools  for  wise  men,  evil  for  good,  do 
reign  and  rule.''  Bishops  absent  from  their  dio- 
ceses, curates  and  vicars  and  parish  priests,  hold- 
ing many  livings,  and  drawing  their  salaries,  and 
living  away  from  home,  and  all  this  with  the 
knowledge  and  consent  of  the  highest  authority. 

^o  wonder  that  religious  doctrine  was  corrupt 
and  religious  practices  debased  with  superstition. 
E'o  wonder  that  there  was  popular  unrest  and  the 
wide-spread  desire  for  change. 

Political,  intellectual,  moral,  ecclesiastical, 
conditions — all  were  gathering  force  to  precipi- 
tate the  storm.  The  only  thing  that  was  needed 
was  a  clash,  a  jolt,  an  explosion,  and  that  was  fur- 
nished by  the  King's  quarrel. 

The  results  were  far  off  and  were  to  be  accom- 
plished only  after  much  trial  and  suffering  and 
bitter  misunderstandings  and  mistrust.  But  when 
the  equilibrium  was  reached,  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, like  a  storm-tossed  ship,  found  herself,  at 
least  not  wrecked  nor  seriously  disfigured,  but 
manned  by  stout  hearts — free  men  in  a  free 
Church — on  an  even  keel  and  in  an  open  sea. 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER 

AND  THE  DOCTRINAL  AND  PRACTICAL  ABUSES 
WHICH  IT  SUPERSEDED 

HAVE  given  in  the  previous  lectures 
a  sketch  of  the  history  of  the  Prayer 
Book  and  of  the  causes,  both  in  Eng- 
land and  on  the  Continent,  which 
brought  about  that  Reformation  of  Religion,  which 
constituted  one  of  the  most  influential  epochs  in 
the  history  of  mankind.  According  to  the  most 
recent  statistics  there  are  about  500  million  Chris- 
tians in  the  world,  of  whom  about  250  millions 
reject,  and  quite  150  millions,  in  one  way  or  an- 
other, appeal  to  the  principles  that  were  declared 
at  the  Reformation.  The  other  100  millions  rep- 
resent a  portion  of  Christendom  not  affected  by 
the  movement.  According  to  the  judgnnent  of  the 
best  modern  scholars  (of  Professor  Beard,  Unitar- 
ian, Hibbert  Lecturer)  the  Reformation  in  Eng- 
land was  sui  generis  and  must  be  studied  apart 


78  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

from  the  similar  movements  ou  the  continent  of 
Europe. 

The  task,  therefore,  which  I  have  set  for  my- 
self in  this  lecture  is  the  description  of  the  changes 
which  took  place  in  the  doctrine,  discipline  and 
worship  of  the  Church  of  England  (and,  therefore, 
in  our  own  Episcopal  Church)  during  the  period 
which  we  have  been  considering.  I  shall  try  to 
give  a  brief  but  intelligible  account  of  the  im- 
Catholic  (and  by  this  I  mean  the  unhistorical  and 
un-primitive)  teaching  and  practice  which  pre- 
vailed in  England  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  the  reformation  of  this  doctrine  and 
practice  which  took  place  and  is  embodied  in  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

The  most  conspicuous  abuses  in  Doctrinal 
teaching  were  connected  with  the  two  great  sub- 
jects, viz. :  the  State  of  the  Dead  and  the  Sacra- 
ment of  the  Holy  Eucharist. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  what  a  hold  on  the 
imaginations  of  men,  in  that  fierce  and  warring 
time,  when  human  life  was  cheap,  Avas  the  doc- 
trine of  Purgatory.  It  Avas  a  comparatively  new 
doctrine — but  it  suited  human  needs.  In  prac- 
tice it  meant  simply  that  no  soul,  however  wicked, 
ever  went  straight  to  hell,  but  to  an  intermediate 
state  of  torture,  from  which  it  could  be  delivered 
by  the  prayers  of  the  Church,  and  more  especially 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER  79 

by  the  offering  of  the  Mass.  Thus  Purgatory 
took  the  place  of  Hell  and  encouraged  men  to 
sin  with  a  royal  gusto,  provided  they  left  enough 
money  to  pay  for  the  masses  that  would  shorten 
their  time  in  this  material  underworld  of  remedial 
punishment.  The  applications  for  these  special 
masses  for  the  dead  became  so  numerous  and  fre- 
quent that  a  special  order  of  Priests  had  to  be 
provided  for  this  purpose;  and  chantries,  with 
special  altars,  were  arranged  in  or  added  to  the 
churches  for  their  accommodation.  As  the  Mass 
could  not  be  celebrated  after  noon,  laws  had  to  be 
passed  prescribing  how  many  masses  could  rev- 
erently be  said  by  a  Priest  on  the  same  day.  It 
was  a  common  saying  that  ^ 'there  are  no  rich  peo- 
ple in  Purgatory — only  the  poor  and  the  fools. '^ 
(See  Bp.  Hall,  IX.,  18.) 

Thus  one  abuse  led  to  another,  and  the  Holy 
Communion  practically  ceased  to  be  a  Communion 
at  all;  comparatively  few  laymen  received  the 
sacrament  more  than  once  a  year  and  this  custom 
prevailed  even  in  many  monastic  establishments. 
When  they  did  receive  it,  it  was  administered 
only  in  one  kind,  and  this  custom  of  refusing  the 
chalice  to  the  laity  had  an  extraordinary  history. 
It  was  condemned  by  Pope  Urban  II.  at  the 
Council  of  Clermont  in  1095,  and  although  the 
Council  of  Constance   (1439)   finally  authorized 


80  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

it,  some  parishes  in  the  diocese  of  Durham,  Eng- 
land, ignored  it  as  late  as  1515.  This  illustrates 
the  independent  spirit  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land— which  crops  out  persistently  during  the 
whole  Mediaeval  j)eriod. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  we  are  writing 
about  an  age  when  the  masses  of  the  people  were 
rude  and  ignorant  and  credulous  beyond  our  com- 
prehension, and  unfortunately  the  men  in  high 
position,  who  knew  better,  permitted  their  greed  of 
power  to  take  advantage  of  the  popular  weakness 
and  credulity.  Eor  example,  the  doctrine  of  trans- 
substantiation  was  a  purely  metaphysical  and  al- 
most unintelligible  effort  to  reconcile  the  plain  fact 
of  the  existence  of  the  bread  and  wine  after  they 
were  consecrated  by  the  Priest,  with  the  theory 
that  they  did  not  exist ;  but  the  popular  application 
of  this  doctrine,  and  the  legends  that  arose  reciting 
incidents  of  the  consecrated  bread  seen  bleeding 
on  the  altar,  are  almost  appalling  in  their  gross- 
ness.  When  a  personage  as  great  as  Pope  Urban 
V.  could  and  did  send  a  piece  of  mixed  wax  and 
balsam  to  an  Emperor,  w^ith  the  solemn  assurance 
that  it  would  protect  him  from  lightning  and  fire 
and  shipwreck,  etc.,  we  cannot  wonder  at  the 
popular  use  of  charms,  the  reverence  for  relics 
and  images,  and  the  silly  and  vicious  superstitions 
that  prevailed.     The  practice  of  indulgences  made 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER  81 

salvation,  to  use  the  language  of  the  time,  a  matter 
of  money,  or,  as  we  say,  a  matter  of  dollars  and 
cents.  It  began  with  the  crusades,  when  knights 
leaving  their  homes  for  this  foreign  war  were 
assured  by  Papal  decree,  that  they  would  be  clear 
from  all  consequences  of  sin  in  case  of  deatL 
(See  Blunt,  v.  L,  p.  37.) 

In  the  sixteenth  century.  Pope  Leo  X.,  in 
order  to  raise  money  to  build  St.  Peter's  Cathe- 
dral in  Rome,  sold  indulgences  by  wholesale  to 
the  Archbishop  Albert  of  Brandenburg  and  he 
in  turn  farmed  them  out  to  agents,  who  sold  them 
on  commission.  One  of  these  agents,  John  Tetzel, 
came  into  collision  with  Martin  Luther,  and  that 
started  the  Reformation  in  Germany.  These  in- 
dulgences really  represented  the  practical  result 
of  compulsory  auricular  confession,  before  Com- 
munion, which  had  been  decreed  for  the  first  time 
in  the  Later  an  Council  of  1215.  When  a  man 
or  woman  confessed  sins  to  a  Priest,  absolution 
had  to  be  accompanied,  if  not  conditioned,  by  an 
act  of  penance.  This  penance  after  a  while  took 
the  form  of  a  fine  in  money.  Thus  the  indul- 
gence, or  remission  of  penance,  could  be  bought 
beforehand.  Some  fine  distinctions  have  been  at- 
tempted by  authors  in  dealing  with  this  subject; 
for  example,  that  remitting  the  penalty  for  sin 
beforehand  is  not  the  same  thing  as  giving  permis- 


82  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

siou  to  siii;  but  you  must  consider  the  average 
ignorance  and  superstition  of  the  age  and  draw 
your  own  conclusions.  It  is  evident  from ,  the 
controversies  of  the  time  (and  we  have  an  abun- 
dant literature  to  inform  us)  that  another  popular 
objection  to  the  obligatory  confessional  was  that 
it  too  was  made  an  instrument  of  tyranny.  As  a 
learned  writer  of  the  sixteenth  century  declares 
(Hall,  V.  IX,  p.  19)  :  'The  virtue  of  absolution 
depends  on  the  fulness  of  confession:  and  that 
upon  examination:  and  the  sufficiency  of  exami- 
nation is  so  full  of  scruples,  besides  those  infinite 
cases  of  unresolved  doubts,  that  the  poor  soul 
never  knows  when  it  is  clear."  And  on  top  of 
all  this  was  the  doctrine  of  intention  commonly 
taught  and  set  forth  by  the  Reforming  Council 
of  Trent,  that  unless  the  ministers  of  the  sacra- 
ments really  intend  to  administer  the  grace  ac- 
cording to  the  order  of  the  Church,  their  spoken 
words  and  external  acts  count  for  nothing,  and 
the  sacrament  is  not  valid.  According  to  this  it 
would  seem,  certainly,  that  a  man  could  never 
know  whether  he  has  ever  been  baptized  or  con- 
firmed or  married  or  absolved  or  communicated. 
^^"0  magnifying  of  the  popularity  and  power  of 
Elizabeth  (I  do  not  mention  Henry  VIII.,  because 
he  was  in  favor  of  most  of  these  abuses)  will  ac- 
count for  the  rapid  spread  of  the  Reformed  opin- 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER  83 

ions  in  England.  The  people  at  large  were  glad 
to  have  a  change.  Many  of  the  abuses,  above  de- 
scribed— abuses  of  doctrine  and  authority — af- 
fected very  intimately  the  religious  life  of  the 
laity ;  and  so  long  as  they  were  persuaded  that  these 
practices  were  authorized  by  the  Scriptures,  they 
had  to  submit;  but  when  the  Bible  was  made  an 
open  book  for  every  man  to  read  and  study  for  him- 
self, they  joined  eagerly  in  the  revolt.  Moreover, 
the  Monastic  ideal,  which  had  become  the  supreme 
Christian  ideal,  exalted  asceticism  and  disparaged 
the  common  life  of  people — treating  it  as  some- 
thing inferior,  if  not  worthless.  When,  therefore, 
the  monasteries  were  abolished  and  the  clergy 
were  permitted  to  marry ;  and  the  Christian  family 
and  the  Christian  home — for  both  clergy  and 
laity — became  the  training  ground  for  piety  and 
the  exemplification  of  true  religion,  the  entire 
everyday  social  life  of  the  people  was  consecrated 
and  every  activity — political,  economic,  educa- 
tional and  recreative — took  on  a  new  meaning  and 
value.  Really,  when  we  read  the  story  and  con- 
sider how  many  and  strong  were  the  appeals  which 
the  movement  made  to  the  average  mind,  we  can- 
not be  surprised  at  excesses  of  individualism,  but 
only  astonished  at  the  conservatism,  that  finally 
triumphed. 

The  Reform  movement  in  the  reigns  of  Henry 


84  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

VIII.  and  Edward  VI.,  we  may  say  was  but  the 
first  step  taken  by  the  Church  of  England  in 
reaching  the  position,  which  was  finally  taken, 
for  weal  or  woe,  in  1662.  The  movement  in 
Henry's  reign  was  dominated  by  the  King  him- 
self, who  hated  the  Pope,  plundered  the  monas- 
teries, and  disapproved  of  the  most  important  of 
the  Eeformation  principles;  and  Edward  VI.  was 
a  boy,  ruled  by  the  Protectors,  Somerset  and  ^NTorth- 
umberland,  who  seized  the  opportunity  to  con- 
fiscate more  of  the  Church  property  and  were  en- 
couraged, for  ulterior  purposes,  by  the  disciples 
of  Calvin  in  Switzerland  to  make  the  Church  more 
and  more  a  mere  department  of  the  State.  The 
reign  lasted  only  six  years,  and  from  the  reforms 
that  were  proposed,  it  would  appear  that  the 
ancient  Church  of  England  was  drifting  to  ship- 
wreck and  complete  ruin.  Mary  and  Elizabeth 
together  saved  the  Church — Mary  by  permitting 
the  Spanish  Inquisitors  to  make  the  anti-Keforma- 
tion  movement  odious,  and  Elizabeth  by  her 
sj^lendid  and  patriotic  intelligence,  that  put  men 
of  great  ability  and  learning  at  the  head  of  affairs 
and  gave  the  real  esprit  de  corps  of  Churchmen 
a  chance  to  grow  and  assert  itself.  Her  Arch- 
bishop, Parker,  was  an  historian  of  proved  learn- 
ing, and  during  her  reign  men  like  Jewell  and 
Hooker  and  Andrewes  and  Bancroft  more  than 


THE  BOOK  OF  COAUVION  PRAYER  85 

held  their  ground  against  the  Eoman  and  Puritan 
controversialists.  Hooker  appealed  to  reason,  and 
Andrewes  appealed  to  history,  and  the  fair-minded 
reader  must  admit  that  the  arguments  they  mar- 
shalled, whether  they  were  valid  or  not,  certainly 
were  not  answered.  They  declared  and  defended 
the  principles  which  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
embodies  and  illustrates,  and  which  the  Anglican 
Communion  has  stood  for  ever  since.  They 
proved  the  integrity  and  organic  continuity  of  the 
Church,  its  ministry  and  sacraments,  and  showed 
that  her  doctrinal  liberality,  her  refusal  to  go  be- 
yond the  great  historic  Creeds  in  her  requirements 
for  Baptism  and  Communion,  was  in  conformity 
with  the  use  and  practice  of  the  earliest  and 
purest  age  of  the  Church.  They  swept  aside  the 
accumulated  superstitions  of  centuries  and  ap- 
pealed to  the  Scriptures  and  to  the  facts  of  prim- 
itive Christian  customs  and  ideals.  They  agreed, 
however,  upon  the  fundamental  and  characteristic 
principles  and  usages  of  historical  Christianity, 
viz. :  the  supreme  solemnity  and  value  of  the  ser- 
vice of  the  Holy  Communion  and  upon  the  nec- 
essity of  Episcopal  ordination.  The  reverent  re- 
gard for  the  Sacrament  implied  the  care  for  the 
ordination  of  the  ministry,  and  the  jealous  con- 
servation of  the  Ministerial  Succession  implied 
the  reverence  for  the  Sacrament.     They  accepted 


so  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

and  approved  the  ancient  truth,  that,  as  the  Holj 
Communion  was  a  supreme  Ceremonial  Action 
of  the  whole  Church,  the  vestments  of  the  clergy 
should  be  retained  and  other  rites  and  ceremonies, 
not  directly  contrary  to  God's  word,  such  as  the 
use  of  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  the  ring  in  the  Mar- 
riage service,  the  throwing  of  earth  upon  the  cof- 
fin at  burials,  and  other  accessories  of  the  service, 
which  the  experience  of  centuries  had  approved. 

This  attitude  aroused,  of  course,  vehement  and 
violent  opposition  from  the  extremists,  who  be- 
lieved, as  he  himself  claimed,  that  John  Calvin, 
at  Geneva,  Switzerland,  was  inspired  of  God,  and 
that  no  order  of  service  or  Church  Government 
ought  to  be  permitted  except  that  which  he  had 
originated,  viz. :  the  Presbyterian  Polity,  wdth  his 
Book  of  Holy  Discipline  and  his  peculiar  forms 
of  prayer. 

It  was  at  once  the  misfortune  and  the  privi- 
lege of  William  Laud,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
from  1625  to  1647,  to  bear  the  brunt  of  this  op- 
position of  the  Puritans.  Laud  was  a  man  of 
sound  learning,  great  ability,  absolutely  sincere; 
and  his  idea  of  the  Church  of  England,  as  Creigh- 
ton  says,  was  higher  and  truer  than  that  of  any 
other  man  of  his  time;  but  there  was  about  him 
the  coldness  which  comes  of  a  strictly  logical  in- 
telligence, which  was  sure  of  its  o\vn  ground  and 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PEAYER  87 

cared  little  for  conciliation.  Therefore,  he  had 
little  magnetism  and  few  friends.  His  real  fight 
was  for  intellectual  freedom  in  the  Church.  His 
failure  was  due  to  the  method  and  manner  in 
which  he  sought  to  accomplish  it. 

I  have  always  thought  that  there  was  a  de- 
cided likeness  of  disposition  and  intellect  between 
Laud  and  Calvin.  Both  had  logical  minds  and 
powerful  intellects,  but  neither  one  of  them  had 
the  sense  of  humor,  without  which  there  is  no 
capacity  to  see  things  in  right  perspective.  Arch- 
bishop Laud,  however,  died  a  martyr  to  the 
Church's  cause,  which,  at  that  time,  was  the  cause 
of  intellectual  liberty,  and  no  man  ever  lived  to 
whom  the  people  who  love  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  owe  more  than  they  do  to  him. 

On  nearly  every  page  of  the  Prayer  Book  you 
will  find  the  marks  of  the  conflict,  through  which 
as  through  a  crucible,  it  has  come  down  to  us. 
Its  very  Title  Page  is  a  declaration  of  historical 
continuity  with  the  past  and  of  modest  toleration. 
^'The  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  Administra- 
tion of  the  Sacraments,  and  other  Rites  and  Cere- 
monies of  the  Church,  according  to  the  use  of  the 
Church  of  England"  or  "of  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Church.'^  So  also  the  Preface  to  the  Ordinal 
asserts  the  facts  of  history,  without  criticism  of 
anv  other  form  of  Church  Government.     "It  is 


88  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

evident  unto  all  men,  reading  Holy  Scripture  and 
Ancient  Authors,  that  from  the  Apostles'  time 
there  have  been  these  Orders  of  Ministers  in 
Christ's  Church — Bishops,  Priests,  and  Deacons 
.  .  .  and  no  man  shall  be  accounted  or  taken  to  be 
a  lawful  Bishop,  Priest,  or  Deacon  in  this  Church 
.  .  .  except  he  hath  had  Episcopal  consecration  or 
ordination."  So  the  general  Preface  to  the  whole 
Book,  published  after  the  last  Kevision  in  1661, 
is  as  follows,  viz. :  "Of  the  sundry  alterations 
proposed  unto  us,  we  have  rejected  all  such  as 
Avere  either  of  dangerous  consequence  (as  secretly 
striking  some  established  doctrine  or  laudable 
jDractice  of  the  Church  of  England,  or  indeed  of 
the  w^hole  Catholic  Church  of  Christ)  or  else  of 
no  consequence  at  all,  but  utterly  frivolous  and 
vain.  But  such  alterations  as  were  tendered  to  us 
as  seemed  to  us  in  any  way  requisite  and  expedient 
Ave  have  Avillingly  assented  unto.  .  .  .  Our  general 
aim  was  not  to  gratify  this  or  that  party  .  .  .  but 
to  do  that,  Avhich  to  our  best  understandings  might 
most  tend  to  the  preservation  of  Peace  and  Unity 
in  the  Church:  the  procuring  of  reverence  and 
exciting  of  Piety  and  Devotion  in  the  Public 
Worship  of  God.'' 

The  Office  for  the  Administration  of  the  ITol}^ 
Communion  with  its  rubrics  will  furnish  us  Avith 
a  good  example  of  the  Avise  conservatism  Avhich 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER  89 

characterized  the  Reformed  Church  of  England 
in  making  the  changes,  which  seemed  absolutely 
necessary.  Our  Communion  Service  is  substan- 
tially a  translation  of  the  Salisbury  Missal,  which 
had  been  used  in  England  for  five  hundred 
years.  This  Missal  was  in  its  structure  peculiar 
to  the  Church  of  England  because  when  St.  Augus- 
tine came  to  England  in  596  he  found  the  British 
Church  already  existing  and  organized,  and  was 
specially  authorized  by  Pope  Gregory  to  continue 
the  use  of  the  native  liturgy  with  a  few  modifica- 
tions. For  this  reason  the  Communion  Ofiice  of 
the  Church  of  England  is  closer  kin  to  the  East- 
ern Liturgy  of  Ephesus  than  to  that  of  Rome, 
and  this  is  particularly  true  of  the  Communion 
Service  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  which,  as  I 
have  said  elsewhere,  has  features  derived  from 
the  Scotch  Service  Book  taken  directly  from  the 
East. 

It  is  a  noteworthy  and  characteristic  feature 
of  this  English  Ofiice  that  alone  of  all  the  liturgies 
it  virtually  begins  with  the  recitation  of  the  Ten 
Commandments.  'No  other  Communion  Service 
in  Christendom  has  this  provision;  and  it  is  re- 
ported of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  that  he  said 
on  one  occasion,  when  the  disestablishment  of  the 
English  Church  was  being  discussed,  that  ^^it 
would  be  worth  while  to  maintain  the  status  of 


90  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

the  Church,  if  for  nothing  else,  just  to  have  the 
Ten  Commandments  of  the  Moral  Law  recited 
every  Sunday  in  every  parish  in  the  Kingdom." 

This  provision,  however,  illustrates  the  learn- 
ing of  the  translators  of  our  Communion  Office; 
because  it  is  well  known  to  scholars,  that  some 
such  lesson  from  the  Old  Testament  was  common 
in  Eastern  Liturgies.  It  was  the  religious  genius 
of  the  English  Eeformers  that  selected  the  Ten 
Commandments  from  various  readings  of  the  Old 
Testament. 

The  Office  was  deliberately  constructed  so  as 
to  be  a  Communion  Service  and  not  a  solitary 
Mass  to  be  rej^eated  by  the  Priest  with  rapid 
enunciation  many  times  a  day,  without  regard  to 
whether  there  were  any  persons  present  to  re- 
ceive the  sacrament,  after  the  manner  of  the 
^'Chantry  Priests."  In  the  first  Prayer  Book,  the 
name  ^^Mass"  was  referred  to  in  the  title  "The 
Supper  of  the  Lord  and  the  Holy  Communion, 
commonly  called  The  Mass" ;  but  this  latter  name 
was  dropped  in  subsequent  revisions  of  the  Prayer 
Book,  because  it  was  not  a  primitive  name  for 
the  Holy  Communion;  it  had  no  special  signifi- 
cance,^ being  a  barbarous  Latin  designation  for 
any  kind  of  religious  service ;  it  was  never  heard 


Vide,  Catholic  (Roman)  Dictionary,  p.  562. 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PKAYEK  <J1 

of  before  the  end  of  the  fourth  century;  and  be- 
cause it  was  connected  in  the  popular  mind  with 
so  many  mediaeval  abuses  as  to  be  liable  to  be 
misunderstood.  The  same  cautious  attitude  was 
observed  with  regard  to  the  practice  of  compulsory 
auricular  confession,  which  had  been  so  inti- 
mately associated  with  the  Holy  Communion  and 
out  of  which  the  whole  system  of  Indulgences — 
the  burning  question  of  the  German  Eeforma- 
tion — had  grown.  For  four  hundred  years  there 
was  a  custom  prevalent  in  the  Church  of  open 
confession  of  sins,  in  more  or  less  minute  detail, 
before  the  congregation,  and  this  naturally  led  to 
scandals  and  to  the  relegation  of  such  self-dis- 
closures to  the  privacy  of  the  closet;  but  it  was 
not  until  1215  A.  D.  that  the  Pope  decreed  that 
every  Christian  man  and  woman  was  solemnly 
obligated  to  make  Confession  to  the  Priest  at 
least  once  a  year.  The  practical  result  of  this 
decree  was  to  encourage  reliance  upon  the  mere 
formal  obedience  to  an  ecclesiastical  rule,  and 
weaken  the  sense  of  individual  responsibility. 

On  this  whole  subject,  bristling  with  difficul- 
ties as  it  was,  the  Church  of  England  took  what 
it  seems  to  me  was  a  brave  as  well  as  a  wise 
position.  She  did  not  yield  to  the  Puritan 
clamor  and  repudiate  a  practice  which  had  a  very 
real   foundation   in   human   nature's   needs    (for 


92  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

the  Weslejans  had  to  revive  it),  but  declared  that 
this  method  of  seeking  pardon  for  one's  sins  was 
purely  voluntary  and  for  exceptional  cases.  The 
language  in  the  Communion  Office  is:  ^'If  there 
be  any  of  you  who  by  this  means  (/.  e.,  by  ordinary 
repentance  and  confession  and  readiness  to  make 
restitution)  cannot  quiet  his  own  conscience  here- 
in, but  requireth  further  comfort  or  counsel,  let 
him  come  to  me  or  some  other  discreet  and  learned 
Minister  of  God's  Word  and  open  his  grief; 
that  by  the  ministry  of  God's  Holy  Word  he  may 
receive  the  benefit  of  absolution,  together  with 
ghostly  counsel  and  advice,  to  the  quieting  of  his 
conscience  and  the  avoiding  of  all  scruple  and 
doubtfulness." 

The  same  wise  moderation  permits  the  use  of 
either  leavened  or  unleavened  bread,  and  allows 
but  does  not  compel  the  use  of  the  special  Euchar- 
istic  Vestments.  The  Eeservation  of  the  Sacra- 
ment, in  any  way  whatever,  is  not  mentioned  in 
the  Prayer  Book  and  certainly  is  not  authorized. 
The  first  Prayer  Book  did  provide  for  the  carr}"- 
ing  of  the  Sacrament  on  daj^s,  when  there  was 
a  stated  Communion,  to  sick  folk  who  could  not 
get  to  Church,  and  this  was  a  most  ancient  and 
precious  custom  of  the  early  Church;  but  even 
this  ^'Reservation  for  the  sick"  had  to  be  dis- 
continued, because  it  was  taken  advantage  of  by 


THE  BOOK  OF  COMMON  PRAYER       93 

party  men  and  made  the  excuse  for  Reserving 
the  Sacrament  as  an  object  of  Divine  Worship 
(Latreia),  a  very  modern  and  misleading  custom, 
unknown  to-day  to  the  churches  of  Eastern  Chris- 
tendom. 

We  may  fitly  conclude  this  lecture  with  a  quo- 
tation from  the  late  Dr.  Brooke  Foss  Westcott, 
Bishop  of  Durham,  one  of  the  greatest  scholars 
and  most  philosophical  thinkers  that  the  English- 
speaking  world  has  produced  : ' 

^'Our  island  home,"  he  said,  ^^has  profoundly 
aifected  our  history  and  character.  .  .  .  With 
us  State  and  Church  have  from  the  first  grown 
side  by  side.  Each  has  acted  on  the  other.  .  .  . 
In  the  Great  Charter  of  English  Liberties  the 
Church  of  England  (Ecclesia  Anglicana)  holds 
the  foremost  place.  .  .  .  The  intimate  intercourse 
of  the  spiritual  and  temporal  powers  of  England 
has  at  once  guarded  the  freedom  of  Churchmen 
and  increased  their  responsibility.  It  has  checked 
the  inclination  of  theological  students  to  multiply 
the  definitions  of  dogma,  which,  even  when  cor- 
rect, tend  to  mar  the  simplicity  and  breadth  of 
that  with  which  they  deal.  In  this  respect  the 
English  Reformation  differed  essentially  from 
the  typical  Reformations  on  the   Continent.      It 


Lessons  from  Work,  p. 


94  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

was  a  Reformation  and  not  a  reconstruction.  It 
made  no  attempt  to  do  away  with  the  past.  .  .  . 
It  showed  the  greatest  respect  to  antiquity,  but 
its  final  appeal  was  to  Scripture.  It  accepted  no 
formulary  in  itself  of  absolute  authority.  The 
Creeds  are  ^to  be  received  and  believed,  for  they 
may  be  proved  by  most  certain  warrants  of  Holy 
Scripture,'  and,  Svhatever  is  not  read  therein  nor 
may  be  proved  thereby,  is  not  to  be  required  of 
any  man.'  .  .  .  The  English  Reformation  cor- 
responds with  the  English  character,  which  is 
disinclined  to  seek  the  completeness  of  a  Theo- 
logical system.  It  looks  to  finding  Truth  through 
life  rather  than  through  Logic,  for  Truth  is  not 
of  the  intellect  only.  It  is  patient  of  hesitation, 
indefiniteness,  even  of  superficial  inconsistency, 
if  only  the  root  of  the  matter  can  be  held  firmly 
for  the  guidance  of  conduct;  for  spiritual  sub- 
jects are  too  vast  to  furnish  clear-cut  premises 
from  which  exhaustive  conclusions  can  be  drawn. 
So  we  naturally  turn  again  and  again  to  the  his- 
toric elements  in  our  Creed.  These  are  of  life; 
and  unto  life;  and  through  life."  Or,  as  we 
Americans  express  it,  Only  the  things  that  belong 
to  life  and  help  life  and  increase  life,  are  worth 
our  while. 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE 

ITS  MEANING  AND  VALUE 

A  sermon,  preached  at  the  consecration  of  the  Rev.  James 

R.  Winchester,  D.D.,  as  Bishop  Coadjutor  of  Arkansas, 

on  the   Feast  of  St.  Michael  and  All  Angels, 

September  29,  1911 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE 

ITS  MEANING  AND  VALUE 

"/  am  the  Light  of  the  world :  he  that  followeth  Me 
shall  not  walk  in  darkness,  hut  shall  have  the  light  of 
life."— St.  John  8:  12. 

HE  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Light 
and  Life  of  the  world.  To-dav,  as 
I  speak  to  jou,  His  Presence  and 
the  communication  of  His  Personal 
Power  are  the  vital  forces  in  the  progress  of  man- 
kind, ^ot  His  words,  not  His  example,  but  He 
Himself  is  the  vital  Energy,  that  is  pulsing 
through  Humanity,  slowly  but  surely  redeeming, 
renewing,  re-creating  our  mortality  into  Eternal 
Life.  ^'He  that  hath  the  Son  hath  life."  '  ^This 
is  Life  Eternal,"  we  have  His  word  for  it,  "to 
know  Thee,  the  Only  true  God  and  Jesus  Christ 
whom  Thou  hast  sent."  '  "I  am  the  way,  the 
truth,  and  the  life,  and  no  man  cometh  unto  the 
Father  but  by  Me."  ' 

I  have  seen  the  sun  in  the  morning,  obscured, 


^St.  John  5:  12. 
-St.  John  17:  3 
^St.  John  14:  G. 


98  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

almost  hidden,  by  the  heavy  banks  of  cloud,  and 
then,  little  by  little,  I  have  seen  the  light  absorb 
the  darkness,  and  the  heat  melt  and  dissipate  the 
vapor,  until  the  atmosphere  was  clear  as  crystal. 
The  clouds  were  not  destroyed ;  the  vapor  was  still 
there;  but  it  was  so  permeated  by  the  light  and 
heat,  that  its  gloom  was  transformed  into  glory. 
So,  I  believe,  the  Eternal  Christ  is  throbbing 
through  life's  vapors,  like  a  fiery  heart  to  the 
world,  melting  its  cruelties,  forging  its  faith, 
kindling  its  love,  brightening  its  vision. 

This  was  the  kejTiote  of  St.  Paul's  message, 
and  his  hearers  so  understood  it.  As  Festus  said 
to  Agrippa,  ^'It  is  a  question  of  one  Jesus,  who 
was  dead,  and  whom  Paul  affirms  to  be  alive."  * 
This  is  what  St.  Paul  means  in  the  Epistle  to 
the  Ephesians,  when  he  says,  that  the  complete 
dominion  of  this  Christ  life — this  Christ  nature — 
in  commerce,  in  legislation,  in  international  rela- 
tions, in  theology,  in  social  life,  in  home  life, 
and  in  individual  experience,  will  be  the  fulfil- 
ment of  God's  ideal  for  the  race,  and  the  perfec- 
tion of  man,  as  the  son  of  God,  "until  we  all 
come,"  he  says,  "in  the  unity  of  the  faith  and  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God,  unto  the  per- 
fect man."  ^ 


^Acts  25:  19. 
''Ephes.  4:  13. 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  90 

"Where  is  one,  that  born  of  woman,  altogether  can  escape 
From  the  lower  world  Avithin  him,  moods  of  tiger  or  of  ape  ? 
Man,  as  yet,  is  being  made;  and  ere  the  crowning  Age  of 

Ages, 
Shall  not  aeon  after  aeon  pass  and  touch  him  into  shape? 
All  about  him   still   the   shadow,  but,  while   races   flower 

and  fade. 
Prophet-eyes  may  catch  a  glory  ever  gaining  on  the  shade. 
Till   the   peoples   all   are   one,    and   their   voices   blend   in 

choric 
Hallelujah  to  the  Maker,  It  is  finished,     Man  is  made." 

II.  And  second,  this  commmiication  of  the 
Christ  Life  to  the  world  is  the  work  of  the  Spirit 
of  God.  It  is  the  Holy  Spirit,  we  say  in  the 
Creed,  who  is  the  Lord  of  Life. 

Wherever  we  see  outward,  visible,  material 
things  organizing  into  system,  and  order,  and 
beauty,  and  pulsing  with  life,  there  is  the  Holy 
Sj^irit  of  God.  When  all  nature  w^as  chaos  and 
confusion  it  was  the  Holy  Spirit  that  moved 
upon  the  face  of  the  waters  and  brought  forth 
order  and  law.  When  God  Avilled  to  become  man 
for  our  sakes  and  forever  unite  the  physical  (as 
we  call  it)  to  the  spiritual — the  mortal  manhood 
to  the  immortal  Deity — it  was  the  Holy  Spirit 
who  came  upon  the  Virgin  and  overshadowed  her, 
so  that  ^^that  Holy  Thing  that  w^as  born  of  her  was 
called  the  Son  of  God."  '  When  at  last  the  work 
of  Jesus  on  earth  was  finished  and  He  had  as- 


St.  Luke  1 :  35. 


100  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUECH 

cended  to  the  Right  Hand  of  the  Father,  it  was 
the  Holy  Spirit  who  came  dovm  upon  that  hand- 
ful of  bereft,  perplexed  disciples,  and  moulded 
them  into  an  organized,  definite  and  effective 
society,  called  The  Church.  For  indeed,  this 
was  the  Lord's  promise :  ^'It  is  expedient  for  you, 
that  I  go  away;  for,  if  I  go  not  away,  the  Com- 
forter (the  Spirit)  will  not  come  unto  you;  but, 
if  I  go  away,  I  will  send  Him  unto  you."  ^  ^^He 
shall  receive  of  Mine  and  shall  show  it  unto 
you":^  ^'When  He,  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  is  come. 
He  will  guide  you  into  all  truth."  *  Therefore 
the  great  Apostle,  on  a  special  occasion,  having 
need  to  assert  this  authority  of  organization  in 
the  Church,  did  not  hesitate  to  say,  '^We  have  the 
mind  of  Christ" ;'"  and,  in  writing  to  the  man, 
whom  he  had  appointed  as  the  head  and  ruler  of 
the  Avhole  church  in  Ephesus,  he  commanded  ^'The 
things  which  thou  hast  heard  of  me  among  many 
witnesses,  the  same  commit  thou  to  faithful  men, 
who  shall  be  able  to  teach  others  also," "  and 
"lay  hands  suddenly  on  no  man."  '' 

III.    It  is  of  vital  importance  to  us  as  Chris- 


^St.  John  16:  7. 

«14. 

M3. 

i«I  Cor.  2:  16. 

"  II  Timothy  2:2. 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  101 

tians  to  remember  that  Christianity  began  its 
work  in  the  world,  not  as  an  appeal  to  individnals, 
not  as  a  doctrine  or  a  philosophy,  but  as  a  family, 
a  kingdom,  an  institution. 

The  communication  of  the  Life  of  the  Christ 
to  humanity  had  to  begin  somewhere ;  and  it  is 
remarkable,  that  it  began,  not  with  one  man,  but 
with  two  men  together,  and  was  at  the  very  out- 
set a  social  institution.  As  St.  John  tells  us 
(1:37),  two  disciples  of  the  Baptist  heard  Him 
speak,  and  they  followed  Him.  So  also  the  Holy 
Spirit  at  Pentecost  descended  upon  all  the  dis- 
ciples and  constituted  the  Church ;  and  it  was  only 
after  that,  that  Ave  read  of  the  Holy  Spirit  being 
given  to  individuals.  In  other  words  the  Com- 
munity, the  Family,  the  Church,  comes  first,  and 
is  the  medium  of  the  life  and  grace,  which  is 
given  through  the  Church  to  the  individual.  As 
St.  Paul  says,  ^'God  gave  Him  to  be  head  over 
all  things  to  the  Church,  which  is  His  Body,  the 
fulness  of  Him  that  filleth  all  in  all,'' ''  and  that 
'^through  the  Church  might  be  known  the  mani- 
fold wisdom  of  God" ;''  which  is  consistent  with 
what  he  says  elsewhere,  that  to  be  baptized  into 
Christ  is  to  be  baptized  into  the  Church."     The 


I  Tim.  5 :  22. 

Ephes.  1:  22;   3:  10. 

Galat.  3:  27  and  I  Cor.  12:  13. 


102  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUPvCH 

Church  is  ideally  the  manifestation  of  the  gradu- 
ally expanding  impartation  of  Christ  to  the  world, 
and  therefore  it  is  called  His  Body ;  '^Ye  are  the 
Body  of  Christ  and  members  in  particular." 
(I  Cor.  12:27.)  If  that  Body  were  perfect  in 
all  its  parts  and  activities,  every  member  of  the 
Body  would  be  a  living  expression  of  the  Christ ; 
but  because  the  Body  is  composed  of  imperfect 
human  souls,  because  the  Church  is  human  in  its 
administration  though  Divine  in  the  origin  and 
source  of  its  life,  we  must  expect  failure  here 
and  there,  where  the  intimacy  of  union  with  the 
Divine  Lord  has  temporarily  declined.  The  Lord 
knew  this  and  anticipated  it;  and  therefore  at 
the  very  heart  of  the  Body,  the  Church,  as  the 
guarantee  of  its  essential  Divine  life.  He  Him- 
self instituted  a  great  and  solemn  Ceremonial 
Action,  in  and  by  which  the  Life-giving  Presence 
of  the  Living  Christ  should  be  certified  and  as- 
sured to  the  end  of  time.  Every  Celebration  of 
the  Holy  Communion  is  a  declaration,  that  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  living,  now  and  here ;  that 
the  Church  is  His  Body,  through  Avhich  He  is 
giving  Himself  to  the  world;  that  every  man  and 
woman,  who  in  faith  partakes  of  that  Sacrament, 
is  partaking  of  Christ ;  that  as  the  life  of  Christ 
on  earth  was  the  life  of  sacrifice,  so  the  law  of 
all  spiritual  life  is  sacrifice;  and  finally,  that  the 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  103 

Minister,  who,  on  behalf  of  the  Church  and  by 
appointment  of  the  Church,  administers  this  Sac- 
rament, is  the  representative  of  a  Priesthood,  so 
high,  so  beautiful,  that  it  fulfils  and  crowns  all 
the  types  and  dreams  of  priesthood,  that  in  the 
past  have  helped  and  blessed  the  world. 

What  Christ  is,  that  the  Church  ought  to  be 
and  will  be;  and  that  unrivalled  priesthood  of 
Jesus,  whereby  He  through  the  Eternal  Spirit 
offered  Himself  without  spot  to  God,  is  the  priest- 
hood of  His  Church,  which  is  His  Body — the 
priesthood  of  service,  of  light-giving,  and  life- 
giving  to  mankind.  So  St.  Peter  says  to  the 
members  of  the  Church,  ^'Ye  are  an  elect  race, 
a  royal  priesthood,  a  holy  nation,  a  people  for 
God's  own  possession" — '^'to  offer  up  spiritual 
sacrifices,  acceptable  to  God  through  Jesus 
Christ."  ''  The  existence  of  the  Church — realiz- 
ing, actualizing,  the  life  and  Presence  of  Christ 
by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  communica- 
ting that  Life  to  the  world  by  its  sacramental 
agencies — this,  we  believe,  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  the  Gospel. 

This  Church  was  a  real  and  visible  society  on 
the  Day  of  Pentecost,  w^hen  after  St.  Peter's  ser- 
mon, three  thousand  were  added  to  it  by  baptism. 


''  I  Peter  2 :  5. 


104  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUPvCH 

It  has  continued  to  be  a  real  and  visible  institu- 
tion with  its  o^yll  principle  of  life,  its  own  law, 
its  own  worship,  its  ow^n  Creed,  ever  since.  There 
has  never  been  a  day  nor  an  hour  since  Pentecost, 
w^hen  the  visible  and  recognizable  Church  of 
Christ  has  not  been  existing  and  working  in  the 
world.  To  deny  this  is  to  deny  the  continuing 
Presence  of  the  Lord,  perpetually  giving  His 
Life  through  His  authorized  agencies  to  His  peo- 
ple. To  deny  this  is  to  make  His  promise  of  no 
effect,  ''Upon  this  Kock  I  will  build  My  Church, 
and  the  gates  of  Hell  shall  not  prevail  against 
it."  "  Of  course  the  Church  has  been  adminis- 
tered by  fallible  human  beings.  It  has  passed 
through  many  vicissitudes.  In  some  countries 
and  at  some  periods  it  has  officially  sunk  to  ap- 
parent depths  of  degradation.  Its  authority  has 
been  usurped  by  individual  Bishops,  by  Kings 
and  Emperors.  Worldly  and  wicked  ecclesiastics 
have  used  its  power  for  cruelty,  bigotry  and 
wrong.  It  was  rent  by  the  schism  of  the  East 
and  West  in  the  eleventh  century,  and  again  by 
the  separation  of  Kome  and  England  in  the  six- 
teenth century;  but  there  has  never  been  a  time, 
when  good  Bishops  have  not  been  true  pastors 
of   their   flocks,    when   faithful    priests   have   not 


"St.  Matt.  16:  18. 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  105 

regularly  administered  the  sacraments,  and  when 
loyal  and  godly  laymen  have  not  devoutly  and 
consistently  kept  the  faith.  And  so  through  it 
all — through  the  fires  of  heathen  persecution, 
through  the  barbarism  of  the  sixth  and  seventh 
centuries,  through  the  storm  of  the  Reformation, 
it  has  continued  to  be  the  One,  Holy,  Catholic,  and 
Apostolic  Church,  to  which  Ignatius  referred  in 
the  year  110  A.  D.,  and  the  belief  in  which  we 
profess  to-day  in  the  great  Creed  of  Christendom. 

IV.  I  have  referred  to  St.  Paul's  description 
of  the  Church  as  the  Body  of  Christ.  I  have 
spoken  of  the  Holy  Eucharist  as  the  heart  of  the 
Body.  'Now  I  believe  that  the  authorized  Minis- 
try, continued  from  age  to  age,  ordained  and  ap- 
pointed according  to  the  provisions  of  the  Church's 
public  law,  is  the  spinal  column  of  the  Body. 
That  Ministry  is  essentially  a  priesthood,  because 
the  Church,  as  I  have  shown,  is  a  priestly  insti- 
tution, for  Christ,  whom  the  Church  represents, 
is  a  Priest  forever. 

As  to  the  method  and  manner  of  the  con- 
tinuation of  that  Ministry,  and  its  proper  and 
legal  appointment,  the  Church  itself  has  never 
had  any  doubt.  The  First  General  Council  met 
in  Jerusalem  in  the  year  51,  and  the  Apostles 
were  recognized  as  the  authoritative  members  of 
it.     The  second  General  Council  met  in  Nicea  in 


106  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

A.  D.  325,  and  the  BishojDs  of  the  various  dio- 
ceses rendered  its  decisions.  The  historic  Church 
has  never  hesitated  for  an  instant  in  its  assertion 
of  the  continuity  and  authority  of  the  Episcopate. 
Some  Councils  have  debated  the  Papal  claims. 
Other  Councils  have  questioned  the  authority  of 
Archbishops  and  Metropolitans;  but  every  Coun- 
cil of  the  Church  for  a  thousand  and  five  hun- 
dred years  has  taken  the  Episcopate  for  granted. 
Indeed,  if  we  except  the  sacraments  of  baptism 
and  the  Holy  Communion,  there  is  not  an  insti- 
tution of  Christianity  for  which  there  is  such 
ancient  and  indisputable  evidence  as  there  is  for 
the  Episcopate.  [N^ot  even  the  observance  of  Sun- 
day; not  even  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  can  be 
attested  by  such  ancient  and  indisputable  proof. 
For  example:  In  the  year  110  A.  D.,  about 
ten  years  after  the  death  of  St.  John  the  Apostle, 
there  was  a  Bishop  of  Antioch,  who  had  con- 
versed with  St.  John,  and  was  called  Christo- 
pheros,  because,  it  was  said,  he  had  been  held  in 
the  arms  of  Our  Lord  Himself.  This  Bishop, 
Ignatius,  was  devoured  by  lions  in  the  Arena  at 
Kome,  because  he  would  not  deny  Christ.  He 
wrote  seven  letters  to  the  churches  of  Asia  Minor, 
which  have  been  preserved,  and  in  them  he  speaks 
so  frequently  of  the  Episcopal  government  of  the 
Church,  that  Lightfoot  says,   ^'All  the  evidence. 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  107 

without  one  dissenting  voice,  points  to  Episcopacy 
as  the  established  form  of  Church  government  in 
Asia  Minor  from  the  close  of  the  first  century; 
and  the  testimony  for  the  spread  of  the  Episco- 
pate in  this  period  is  more  abundant  and  more 
varied  than  for  any  other  institution  and  event 
during  this  period."  ''  And  Professor  Fisher,  the 
Congregationalist  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory at  Yale  College  wrote,  ^'The  institution  of 
the  monarchial  or  diocesan  Episcopate  may  be  at- 
tributed to  St.  John."  '^  Again,  there  was  a  man 
named  Irenaeus,  who  was  Bishop  of  Lyons  in 
Gaul  from  A.  D.  179  to  A.  D.  200.  He  lived 
to  a  great  age.  He  was  born  in  Asia  Minor  and 
w^as  a  disciple  of  Polycarp,  Bishop  of  Smyrna, 
who  was  a  pupil  of  St.  John.  We  have  a  bulky 
volume  of  the  writings  of  Irenaeus,  which  have 
come  down  to  us,  and  in  these  writings  he  says: 
'^We  can  enumerate  those,  who  by  the  Apostles 
were  appointed  Bishops  in  the  churches  and  their 
successors  even  to  our  own  time."  A  great  Mod- 
ern scholar,  speaking  of  the  reverence  due  the 
Bible,  says,  ^^Any  man  who  wishes  to  know  what 
the  early  Christians  thought  about  the  Bible  can 
learn  more  from  reading  the  writings  of  Irenaeus 
than  he   can  by  reading  all  the  German  mono- 


^"^  Apostolic  Fathers,  Vol.  I.,  p.  377. 

^*  Validity  of  'Son-Episcopal  Ordination,  p.  4. 


108  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

graphs  on  the  subject  that  have  appeared  in  the 
past  fifty  years."  Irenaeus  is  a  good  witness  for 
the  Bible.  He  is  also  a  good  witness  for  the  his- 
toric Episcopate. 

But,  to  show  that  this  conviction  was  not 
limited  to  any  one  part  of  the  Christian  world 
at  that  time,  we  have  the  statement  of  a  Eoman 
lawyer,  Tertullian,  who  lived  in  E'orth  Africa 
before  the  end  of  the  second  century,  as  follows: 
"If  any  dare  to  connect  themselves  with  the 
Apostolic  age,  let  them  unfold  the  succession  of 
their  Bishops,  so  coming  down  from  the  begin- 
ning with  continuous  steps  from  the  Apostles." 

These  men  lived  very  close  to  the  Apostolic 
Age.  St.  John  did  not  die  until  about  the  year 
100  A.  D.,  and  Irenaeus  was  born  about  125 
A.  D.  Bishop  White,  the  first  Bishop  of  Penn- 
sylvania, was  consecrated  Bishop  in  1Y84;  and 
Bishop  Green  of  Mississippi,  with  whom  I  was 
intimately  associated  for  a  number  of  years,  was 
a  friend  and  companion  of  Bishop  White.  Con- 
sequently I  have  a  right  to  feel  that  I  know  from 
Bishop  Green's  conversations  with  me  what  the 
opinions  and  judgments  of  Bishop  White  were; 
and  I  am  separated  from  Bishop  White  by  as 
long  a  period  of  years  as  Irenaeus  was  separated 
from  St.  John.  I  regret  that  I  have  had  to 
weary  the  congregation  here  this  morning  with 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  109 

these  quotations.  My  argument  is,  that  Chris- 
tianity was  from  the  start  a  vital  organism — an 
institution,  a  Church — used  as  a  vehicle  and  me- 
dium by  the  Holy  Spirit  to  bear  witness  to 
Christ's  Life-giving  Presence  in  the  world;  and 
my  reference  to  the  dry  facts  of  history  was  only 
for  the  purpose  of  corroborating  this  truth.  We 
believe  that  the  life  and  power  of  Christ,  in  a 
special  sense,  are  communicated  to  men  to-day, 
in  and  by  the  sacramental  ministrations  of  the 
organized  Church;  and  that  they  were  so  com- 
municated during  all  the  preceding  centuries  for 
eighteen  hundred  years.  If  this  be  true,  it  is 
worth  while  enquiring  whether  the  Christian 
Church  from  the  beginning  has  asserted  and  pro- 
claimed this  tremendous  truth.  We  cannot  help 
appealing  to  history,  and  history  without  doubt 
declares  that  the  Church  has  proclaimed  this 
truth,  in  its  liturgies,  its  Creeds,  its  councils,  and 
its  public  law. 

V.  It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  discuss  at 
length  the  question,  when  and  how  the  Church 
became  conscious  of  the  need  of  legislating  on 
the  subject  of  the  Ministry.  It  is  one  thing  to 
live,  and  it  is  another  and  a  different  thing  to 
i^nquire  into  and  determine  those  laws  of  health 
and  growth  by  obedience  to  which  life  is  promoted 
and  sustained.     We  are  quite  justified  in  believ- 


110  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

ing  that  the  Church  during  the  last  half  of  the 
first  century  had  a  regularly  constituted  Minis- 
try, even  though  Ave  have  no  official  and  positive 
enactments  or  declarations  on  the  subject.  It  is 
contrary  to  all  experience  of  life  to  expect  any 
such  pronouncements.  The  Church,  for  example, 
lived  in  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ,  as  the  Only- 
begotten  Son  of  God,  for  at  least  two  hundred 
years  before  that  truth  was  made  the  subject  of 
formal  enactment  and  credal  definition;  and  the 
Gospel  itself  was  preached  for  at  least  thirty 
years  before  it  was  committed  to  Avriting.  The 
oak  is  involved  in  the  acorn ;  and  He  who  made 
the  seed,  made  the  tree. 

Scholars  with  varying  predispositions  and 
motives  have  entered  upon  minute  study  and  spec- 
ulation as  to  the  forms  of  ministry  mentioned  in 
the  Xew  Testament;  as  to  the  identity  of  the 
office  of  Bishop  and  Presbyter,  when  St.  Paul 
wrote  his  Pastoral  Epistles;  as  to  the  character 
and  limitations  of  the  charismatic  ministries;  as 
to  the  value  of  the  evidence  contained  in  the 
Christianized  Jewish  manual  called  the  Didache; 
as  to  whether  the  authority  of  the  Episcopate  was 
to  any  degree  advanced  by  the  fact  that  Bishops 
appear  to  have  been  the  financial  agents  of  the  con- 
gregations; as  to  whether  there  were  any  congre- 
gations in  New  Testament  times  w^hich  were  in- 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  111 

dependent  of  all  order  and  authority — and  the 
results  have  varied,  according  to  the  predilections 
of  the  scholars,  some  of  whom  seem  to  have  lost 
sight  of  the  whole  in  studying  the  parts.  The 
great,  the  important  fact  is,  that  Christ  founded 
His  Church ;  that  the  Holy  Spirit  vitalized  it  on 
the  Day  of  Pentecost;  that  the  ministers  of  that 
Church  baptized  converts  and  administered  the 
Holy  Communion;  and  that  the  Church  of  St. 
Paul  and  St.  John  was  the  Church  of  Clement 
and  Ignatius  and  Irenaeus  and  Augustine  and 
Gregory  and  Anselm  and  Laud;  and  that  that 
Church  is  on  earth  to-day,  witnessing  by  the  Eu- 
charistic  Oblation  on  a  thousand  thousand  Altars 
throughout  the  world,  the  Presence  and  the  Life 
of  Jesus  Christ  her  Lord. 

VI.  That  Life  is  indeed,  as  our  text  says, 
the  Light  of  the  world,  and  with  increasing  earn- 
estness and  intensity  good  men  are  acknowledg- 
ing His  dominion. 

For  (1)  the  world  cannot  progress  without  a 
moral  standard,  a  moral  criterion;  and  all  the 
genius  of  more  than  thirty  generations  has  failed 
to  invent  an  ideal  of  life  equal  to  His.  What- 
ever may  be  the  differences  of  opinion  among  men 
as  to  the  meaning  and  purpose  of  religion,  there 
is  practically  no  doubt  in  the  civilized  world  as 
to  its  Highest  Kepresentative.     The  supreme  type 


112  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

of  manhood  is  Jesus  Christ.  There  are  Chinamen 
who  are  saying  that  to-day  and  trying  to  live  up 
to  it ;  and  Japanese,  and  Malays,  and  Indians,  and 
Africans,  as  well  as  Americans  and  Europeans. 
There  is  no  race  of  people  on  the  earth  among 
whom  the  appeal  of  the  life  and  character  of  Jesus 
Christ  can  be  said  to  have  failed. 

And  then  (2)  as  we  realize  the  increased  em- 
phasis which  is  being  placed  to-day  upon  the  social 
meaning  of  the  Gospel  and  the  social  nature  of  its 
appeal,  we  cannot  but  be  impressed  with  the  wis- 
dom of  the  Lord's  provision,  that  there  should  be 
an  illustration  of  this  truth  in  an  actual  society 
of  men  and  women,  where  love  and  not  envy,  ser- 
vice and  not  selfishness,  are  the  ideal  principles 
of  its  existence.  Such  a  society,  which  is  a  family, 
where  there  are  indeed  differences  of  gifts,  differ- 
ences of  function  and  order,  but  identity  of  life 
and  purpose,  based  on  love — such  a  society  we  be- 
lieve Christ  instituted  when  He  founded  His 
Church.  It  is  true  indeed,  that  the  Church  has 
not  adequately  fulfilled  the  purpose  of  its  Founder 
(St.  Paul  says  we  have  this  treasure  in  earthen 
vessels),  and  that  its  unhappy  divisions  have  di- 
verted its  attention  from  its  primary  aim  and  the 
justification  of  its  being;  but  any  fair-minded  man 
who  reads  history,  must  admit  that,  to  turn  away 
from  the  historic  Church  is  to  turn  awav  from  the 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  113 

only  institution,  which  for  more  than  a  thousand 
and  five  hundred  years  has  continuously  and  con- 
sistently offered  any  kind  of  organized  resistance 
to  the  influences  and  forces,  which  have  always 
been  trying,  as  they  are  now  trying,  to  make  God 
a  monster  and  man  a  mere  selfish  animal.  Talk 
as  you  please ;  say  what  you  will  against  the  Medi- 
aeval Church  or  the  eighteenth-century  Church, 
there  has  never  been  a  day  nor  an  hour,  when 
Bishops  and  priests — multitudes  of  them — have 
not  been  honestly  and  faithfully  trying  to  realize 
the  ideal,  for  which  the  Church  was  founded; 
viz. :  to  be  an  example  and  inspiration  of  social 
righteousness  to  the  world.  As  an  organization — 
and  what  is  the  use  or  value  of  any  movement  with- 
out organization? — the  Church  has  had  to  have 
men  exercising  authority.  But  surely  that  exer- 
cise of  authority  has  never  been,  in  theory  or  inten- 
tion, either  arbitrary  or  selfish.  Always,  when 
men  have  been  set  apart  for  the  higher  ministries 
of  the  Church,  it  has  been  understood  that  they 
have  accepted  for,  and  on  behalf  of,  the  people 
a  responsibility  for  wider,  deeper,  and  more  con- 
secrated service. 

We  believe  that  these  facts  deepen  the  respon- 
sibility and  enlarge  the  opportunity  of  the  Episco- 
pate in  our  day.  The  Bishop  represents  the  uni- 
versal, the  Catholic  spirit  of  Christianity.     By  the 


114  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHUECH 

very  traditions  of  his  office  he  is  pledged  to  overgo 
and  transcend  all  differences  of  party,  all  preju- 
dices of  class  and  section.  A  truly  Catholic 
Bishop  cannot  be  a  partisan.  People,  it  has  been 
often  said,  who  are  doubtful  of  their  social  posi- 
tion, will  always  be  asserting  it ;  but  a  Bishop,  who 
knows  that  he  is  a  legitimate  successor  in  the  Apos- 
tolic Office,  can  afford  to  be  broad-minded.  He 
can  recognize  all  baptized  Christians  as  members 
of  the  one  Catholic  Church;  and  with  due  appre- 
ciation of  the  historic  causes  of  our  unhappy  di- 
visions he  can  interpret  rules  and  rubrics,  so  as  to 
emphasize  the  points  of  agreement  among  all 
Christian  people,  and  cultivate  charity,  good-will, 
and  sympathetic  understanding,  one  of  another. 
The  love  of  Christ  constraineth  us. 

Brethren:  The  Church  of  England  w^as  called 
the  Bulwark  of  the  Eeformation,  and  we  believe 
that  it  was  the  Providence  of  God  that  preserved 
in  this  Church  the  ancient  order  of  the  Episcopal 
Succession,  which  it  is  her  duty  to  protect  and  to 
maintain,  not  as  an  exclusive  privilege,  but  as  a 
trust  committed  to  her,  and  as  basis  perhaps,  upon 
which  all  Christians  may  some  day  come  together 
in  visible  union.  Mortal  men  will  never  agree 
l^erfectly  in  their  opinions  or  in  the  method  of 
expressing  their  religious  life ;  but  they  may  agree 
upon  an  institution;  and  there  is  no  organic  insti- 


THE  HISTORIC  EPISCOPATE  115 

tution  of  Christianity  so  Catholic,  so  ancient,  as 
the  Historic  Episcopate. 

Like  St.  Paul,  therefore,  we  must  magnify  our 
office  by  cultivating  the  personal  virtues  of  hu- 
mility and  faith.  To  minimize  and  depreciate 
the  office  would  be  to  magnify  ourselves.  The 
more  utterly  we  believe  in  the  Divine  authority  of 
our  commission,  the  more  humble  and  gentle  and 
charitable  shall  we  be  in  the  exercise  of  its 
authority. 

The  Lord  said,  in  the  words  of  my  text,  ^'T  am 
the  Light  of  the  world ;  he  that  f olloweth  Me  shall 
not  w^alk  in  darkness,  but  shall  have  the  Light 
of  Life." 

There  is  no  compromise  in  those  words — no 
suggestion  of  doubt,  or  concession,  or  indecision. 
Christ  is  all  or  nothing. 

So  the  Church  of  Christ,  which  is  His  Body — 
the  Church  which  was  born,  not  yesterday,  nor  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  nor  in  the  eleventh  century, 
when  Hildebrand  created  the  Papal  Monarchy; 
but  which  began  to  be  on  the  day  of  Pentecost — 
so  the  Church  of  Christ  to-day,  as  in  the  beginning, 
asserts  her  authority  and  appeals  to  men,  not  with 
a  "perhaps,"  but  with  a  conviction  of  certainty. 
At  this  service  this  morning  we  are  assisting  in 
adding  one  more  to  the  list  of  those  stewards  and 
trustees  of  her  gifts,  who  by  God's  will  have  been 


IIG  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

the  instruments  in  perpetuating  her  long-descended 
life.  It  does  seem  a  long,  long  time  since  Pente- 
cost; and  some  men  who  would  like  to  attribute 
uncertainty  and  confusion  to  the  history  of  the 
Church,  tell  us  that  we  cannot  be  sure  of  our  eccle- 
siastical genealogy  or  our  legitimate  descent. 

How  foolish  such  talk  is ! 

I  remember  standing  in  the  Cathedral  at  Can- 
terbury three  years  ago  and  reading  upon  the 
tablet  in  the  west  front  the  list  of  all  the  Arch- 
bishops, with  dates  of  birth,  death,  and  consecra- 
tion, for  thirteen  hundred  and  twenty-one  years. 
In  the  pavement  of  the  sanctuary  of  our  I^ew  York 
Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine  there  is  a  Roman 
brick,  taken  from  the  Church  of  St.  John  at 
Ephesus,  which  was  built  by  the  Emperor  Jus- 
tinian in  the  year  554  A.  D.,  over  the  traditional 
site  of  St.  John's  grave. 

Brethren :  Time  is  but  a  law  of  thought.  The 
Church  is  still  young.  The  Christ  who  appeared 
visibly  to  St.  Stephen  and  St.  Paul  and  St.  John, 
is  the  Christ  who  is  with  us  here  to-day. 

Let  us  surrender  ourselves  to  His  Presence, 
and,  as  we  set  apart  this  our  brother  to  the  duties, 
the  responsibilities,  the  labors  of  his  Apostleship, 
lot  us  listen  for  His  Voice,  saying:  ^'Ye  have 
not  chosen  Me,  but  I  have  chosen  you;  that  ye 
should  go  and  bring  forth  fruit,  that  your  fruit 
should  remain." 


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